Please tell me why are these kids allowed to continue at the schools? They are not the victims here.
10
Both the College Board and ACT have internal programs to review and validate requests for accommodations based on medical need. It would seem that basic statistical analysis of accommodation requests and student profiles, which are quite extensive, would have highlighted the common denominators.
Perhaps it's just an unfortunate coincidence but, I thought it interesting that Willam Singer shares a last name with Jeremy Singer, President of College Board, creator of the SAT.
1
Send your kids to state schools, most are sufficiently good.
These private colleges in the U.S. are such a rip off, I know I attended one back when it was possible to get a full scholarship based on blind admissions. My alma mater now costs $70,000 yr. Now I teach at an elite Canadian university that costs around $2000 year. It is not possible to buy your way in, only grades count. We pay for it with fairly applied taxes. Those who work hard are rewarded and students are not burdened with huge debts.
7
Make the students who were admitted under the pretenses of this scam retake the SAT or ACT. If they score near what they scored according to their application, let them stay, if not- expel them immediately. And if they were admitted as athletes, have them demonstrate their athletic ability to play at a college level. If they fail, and they will, expel them. This scam should be a lesson to many, not just swept under the rug.
4
I clap my hands when I saw the news. Too many politicians have done the same. Not sure we can fix this problem. Too many politicians in Washington have done the same thing. Bush and Kerry were C students at Yale. At least, they are honest about the grades. Our Corruptor-in-Chief President threatens people not to disclose his grades. He might have bought his degree from Penn.
Why do you think Obama's and Clinton's kids went to Harvard and Stanford?
6
The SAT has had cheating problems for quite a while. Several years ago there was a report (by WAPO, I believe, or the NYT) about Asian students in the U.S. traveling to Asia to take the exam because the SAT given abroad was the one given in the previous test cycle in the U.S.
Therefore, they already knew all the correct answers before they took the exam. Prestó! 99 th percentile, and Ivy League entrance.
2
It’s unlikely that Mr. Singer is the only person in the country offering these services. Ditto those who can be bought in exchange for admissions assistance. These people are all just the tip of a very dirty iceberg.
81
Whether the kids knew about the fraud or bribery, it is without question their admissions or diplomas must be revoked!! The kids should not benefit, period!! They will simply have to engage in the admission process again on their merits.
5
As a professor at a large research university--I want to know the GPAs of the fraudulently admitted students after a few years of college. Are they doing OK? If yes, what does that say about the admissions process of elite schools, especially Stanford and Yale? Why bother at all?
If they are not doing OK, then how are they getting through? Tutors and other supports, or cheating on papers and tests?
Are these faux students confused about the cause of academic struggles? Or complacent about their entitlement, no matter what?
There are so many people who are ticked off about this: especially students who did not get in, students who had to actually work really hard to get in, students who have been labeled "affirmative action" admits and scorned as such when the real scorn should be showered on the rich who use the back and side doors for their kids.
And let's add ticked-off college professors. This scandal says that scholarship and ethics in academe are secondary to athletics and "so much winning".
This is really disgusting.
66
@SJL
Have you watched the videos posted online by some of the fraudulently admitted students? One celebrity daughter even said she wasn’t planning on going to classes, she just wanted to party. And, then went on to make money for Amazon by posting a photo of her dorm room furnished by Amazon Student Prime.
Doubt she, or most of the rest, even stick around to graduate, unless the parents continue to pay for other students to take the tests for them.
9
@SJL
And the legit students (and profs) are themselves getting ripped off by being deprived of the level of intellectual rigour from which all would otherwise benefit through their interaction with each other.
That media queen twit who doesn't even appreciate the school seat bought for her adds NOTHING to the educational environment, not just because she's not actually up to the task, but more importantly, because she doesn't care (and we can thank her parents for that).
12
I am getting a very different picture now than when I first read this story breaking. The first headlines sounded like these SCHOOLS were admitting unqualified students in response to donations from their rich parents. Instead, it now sounds clearly like these were individual faculty or administrators who were corrupted by bribes into recommending admission based on documentation they knew were false. Or, in some cases, individual test administrators who participated in cheating. The schools did not even know this was going on, and reaped no financial benefits from the scheme.
That is a very different kettle of fish, and I think the headlines should make this distinction clear. Misleading people is not good journalism.
2
"The University of California, Los Angeles, where the former men’s soccer coach is accused of taking $200,000 in bribes to help two students gain admission, warned Wednesday that it might punish students whose applications contained misrepresentations, including by revoking their admission."
"It might," huh? What is the school waiting for? Perhaps they want to find out if any higher officials were in on the take? This could be way bigger than that medical school dean smoking crack (USC, Dr. Carmen Puliafito).
Some of these schools are part of a vast criminal enterprise, that has gaslighted millions of high school students into thinking that their best choice is signing six-figure loans, then sitting in huge lecture halls listening to useless one-way "education," followed by induction into a job market that has no interest in paying them enough to repay the loans. The elite, cloistered, college castles float on a sea of money stolen from students future earnings, with a social cost extending into the trillions of dollars for our economy. They're in on the joke, that it's really a charm school for billionaire's kids.
The latest Art Institutes collapse of a chain of colleges and the resultant screwing of 26,000 students by DeVos and her league of bankster co-conspirators is just part of this enormous cancer in the higher education "industry." Evidently the state schools are no different.
4
What a total lack of ethics all around! Didn't these parents think about what they were teaching their children about morality and honor? I've always believed that a university education is about becoming an educated person and responsible adult and citizen. The parents, coaches, test changers and any other adult involved in this should be sentenced to prison, and serve their time in the general population of prisoners. Our society has rewarded the already wealthy in so many ways often at a high cost to the non wealthy. It's as though money is the highest value rather than treating others as we want to be treated, allowing everyone who works at it to achieve the American Dream. We live in a crazy time with our values becoming more and more corrupted all the time. I ache for the young people who are being taught that this is the way to live!
6
The students should also lose their admission and be replaced by poor, qualified students. If the kids aren’t edpelled, then colleges are simply continuing to send the message that wealth can allow you to cheat your way into anything. I doubt they will be expelled, because in this country wealth does indeed protect you from most consequences.
4
First, the abuse of the diagnosis of "learning disabled" to gain some purported advantage on standardized testing is infuriating to parents of LD kids who have worked diligently throughout their academic careers to manage and master their challenges.
Second, the colleges' assertion of their victimhood is profoundly disingenuous. Seriously, Yale? You let your coaches recruit players without any oversight? And you fail to notice that these "players" recruited never actually play for your teams?? No one at admissions is overseeing this? And yet you tout the qualifications of the "interesting" new admits every year to the next class of prospective applicants...
6
Ah. These are the same "it's all about me" sort of people who abuse the service dog system by paying off a falsifier of the requisite credentials so that Muffy can ride with them on the plane for free - in contrast to the rule abiding public who pay their $100 or so per flight.
And on through life these elites go, skating along. Our culture is now one of "do what I say, don't do what I do", as least as far as far too many of the elites are concerned.
What these elites forget is for any society to survive long term and for their class not to be rightfully destroyed, wealth and power brings responsibility and the societal need for one to be a proper role model to aspire to.
However, most of the elites now simply ignore this responsibility part. if that weren't so, we wouldn't be seeing events like this, again and again and again. So now we are in a social free for all, where the crasser a person is, the more successful he or she becomes.
At least the old New England WASP-driven societal norms had some elements that one should not be excessively abusive towards those that are weaker or less well positioned, nor flaunt one's wealth. But we've managed to obliterate those norms quite completely.
So now we have none. No wonder the Islamic fundamentalists view us as a totally corrupt society that, given its corruption, should be destroyed. They have a point - not about the solution, but certainly about the corruption.
5
I guess one of the sad parts about this whole thing is how little I am surprised by it.
5
The irony of all this is that those parents who cheat their kids into elite schools (and haven't been caught) will claim that their children's success is the result of their obvious intellectual and moral superiority. America is a meritocracy, isn't it?
I wonder how many of those parents had parents who cheated their kids into a life of success.
4
What's still missing from this story is where the children of these wealthy parents went to high school. My bet is that all or most didn't attend a public school or, if they did, it was at a school in a wealthy exclusive suburb which seem to always have resources for college-prep.
Note that, at least so far, no children and parents of color are involved. That's telling. Maybe Betsy DeVos can explain that, alongside her promotion of "charter" for profit schools at taxpayer expense.
1
The appropriate punishment for these parents should be expelling their children from their schools or not admitting them.
3
It has got nothing to do with the higher education system or with parents benefitting their children--obviously it doesn't. It hurts them more than it benefits them, and hurts those who are qualified but rejected even more. It is about parental vanity, parents doing for themselves--competing for status. My kid goes to....
1
The students should be responsible for the content of their applications, period. If the parents were involved in falsifying application materials with or without the consent of the student, the application is still fraudulent. Any university or college which excuses the students at the behest of the cheating parents will be as complicit in the fraud as the parents themselves. But that too would ultimately not be a surprising outcome, since the "system of wealth" protects it's own as a rule. And the university's are an integral part of that system.
7
So far just two of the colleges are 'considering disciplining students who were connected' to these crimes. It would be hard to believe most weren't aware (cause for immediate expulsion) but even if some weren't aware all should now learn a hard but needed lesson that you should earn and not buy your way in life. They can reapply (and retake entrance exams) and get in to a school based on their true merits or perhaps as one of these famous kids have indicated, not go to school at all as they didn't really want to be there. Truly a wasted seat some deserving student should have had.
7
There is nothing left that is not corrupt in this country, nothing.
3
Since before the 2016 election, I have asked every Trump voter I meet why they are unconcerned about his tax avoidance, grift, con and the way he cheats workers and trades. They always say they really don’t care - it is the law that allows him to do this and we should enforce the laws. Even today they say the same as his corruption pervades every level.
40 years of Smaller government means less enforcement. This is how we got here. Every time you cut headcount you cut those people who are there to hold up the institutions priorities.
5
What this confirmed is that the admissions process at these large, well-known, "prestigious" universities is unfair. It has always been unfair, from quotas on Jews and restrictions on women and minorities, to legacy and athlete preferences. And it will continue to be unfair, despite our outrage. The wealthy and the privileged will continue to game the system.
So I say, give up on the chase of "prestige." Our country is blessed with so many wonderful colleges and universities, places where the teachers' primary job is to teach, where students aren't there because of some endless quest for status, but to learn, to mature, and to become better human beings. Graduate programs and experienced employers know and respect these schools. Going to one will not hold you back, but rather nurture you and change your life. Hopefully this fraud steers parents and students away from "prestige" universities at the top of the US News rankings, and toward the many other outstanding and unique schools in our country.
7
It appears, once again, that the first step is to get rid of the testing.
How much did Jared Kushner's Dad pay to Harvard again?
$2.5million wasn't it?
5
Now that these long-time-on-going scams on the collegiate level has come to light, perhaps it is high time that a discrimination case in which more than 4,000 teachers of color in New York State public schools are plaintiffs will come to the attention of the general public. This is the case of Gulino vrs. New York City Department of Education and New York State Department of Education which has been in the courts for over 20 years. It is apparent that not a single plaintiff affected by the case has yet to receive a financial settlement.
What goggles the mind is that, a few years ago, a NY Times article by Motoko Rich "Where Are The Teachers of Color?" should have sounded an alarm relevant to this case, but alas! The main point of the article was the equation that over 80 percent of the students population of NY public schools is comprised of students of color, yet roughly 65 percent of NY teachers are white. The latter alludes to the notion of the guarantee of NY State public schools as "a pipe-line to prison."
2
The wealthy class seems to be taking their cues from President Trump’s leadership on this one. “What would Trump do?” He would take every advantage that his money and his lack of ethics would afford to position himself or his family. It’s only wrong if you get caught, are charged with a crime, tried in a court of law and then convicted. If you manage to settle the matter before conviction then it isn’t wrong, it is smart. Hire the best lawyers and consultants who know how to exploit the procedural weak points and legal loopholes, throw them under the bus if necessary. The main thing is to win. That is all that counts. If the press reports anything about it then attack them personally and politically. If the FBI or other law enforcement or intelligence officials get involved then attack them too and fire their leaders.
What does Trump have to say about college admission cheating and fraud?
6
Imagine the mindset of an 18 year old 1974 Brooklyn College freshman overwhelmed by the inescapable $53 "consolidated fee" and parents clueless to even his grade level. While in attendance, imagine simultaneously commuting 2 hours from Brooklyn to Massapequa -by subway, rail and bus - for his 14 hour shift at Baskin Robbins on alternate days. What a total loser.
3
The election is rigged by Trump and foreign Money. College admission is rigged by Affirmative Action and Legacy system legally, by rich parents illegally. Public safety is rigged by the NRA and the 2nd amendment. The Legislators is rigged by Lobbyist and alligators. The Church is rigged by the sex scandal and despicable money-driven Evangelical church of various kinds. How many things are left and not rigged in this "shining house on the hill"?
8
Welcome to the real America. Obviously, these families didn't have enough money for the real fixers. Gotta clean out the lower stables now and then to keep up meritocratic appearances, and keep the lowlife climbers down. By the way where did the Gates and DuPont kids go to college? Was it one named after their daddy's? This is how these universities have always functioned. Legacy admissions anyone?
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The rich commit fraud and bribery all day. Tax fraud, bank fraud, non-profit corporation and charity fraud. Probably half of all charities are tax avoidance schemes. The Trump charity is the norm. Wall Street is rife with criminal activity, specifically bribery to get insider information. Your child's teacher probably has their job because they have a friend with power. Average citizens commit fraud regularly. Probably a third of car owners in NYC commit fraud against their auto insurance company. There are 20 million illegal immigrants committing some form a fraud and most of their employers are complicit. Educational theft of services fraud sending children to school in districts they don't really live in. People are afraid to call for enforcement because they are afraid their scheme will get shut down. Those of us who cheat less, feel like fools.
1
All reports of who did what in this "scandal" use the word "alleged" liberally -- nonetheless they are trotting people's names into public view without a trial. Ruining lives without knowing for certain what you're talking about is hardly responsible journalism, whether you use weasel words or not.
Privilege, entitlement, fame and money is not enough. They have to cheat and bribe and lie their way in, and in turn disenfranchise some poor but well deserving, honest and hard working kid whose spot they stole.
I feel bad for the kids who got their rejection letters when these entitled rich brats took their spots - and those who got in by their parents' cheating need to be all kicked out.
2
Just wondering how many surgeons, airline pilots, bridge designers, etc. made their way through college this way?
Disheartening to say the least. Why don't they just get a diploma printed a fake piece of paper from their local "fixer" and be done with it? Fake diplomas just like the fake people they are ... no guilt with these cheaters, none.
So, how did George W. Bush get into Yale? Were his SAT scores stellar, or was his alumnus Dad just a big contributor? And, how did Donald J. Trump get into Wharton? What were his academic credentials?
4
After reading yet another sad report highlighting the lack of honor and integrity in our society I felt hopeless and disgusted. We as a society need to see some good come out of this shameful display. An idea:
How about seizing of all those ill gotten bribes and turning them scholarship fund for students who can demonstrate honor and integrity in their daily lives?
2
I'm taking the kids off their tennis and soccer teams. Sailing seems to be the ticket, ay least at Stanford.
1
And with their ill-equipped kids now ensconced in these so-called top schools, presumably, their deplorable parents are also paying people to write their kids' papers and take their tests.
Also, is there anything sadder and more soul-destroying than the kid that calls herself a social media influencer? Influencer?
Where are we headed, America?
5
If these students needed help getting admitted to these colleges, but weren’t worried about failing out, then it says something about the college system we have. For liberal arts majors, college is about gaining credentials, not learning a job skill. But, what amazes me is the amount of the money these rich people are willing to pay just so their kid can say they went to USC. Don't get me wrong, USC isn’t a bad school, but half a million dollars? Just to get in? Wow!
The US has a lot of great schools and huge diversity of schools. But mostly your system is ridiculous.
VERY glad our kids can go to a Canadian school. Easy to apply, no SATs, no ECs, no coaching and counselling, rarely an essay. Just look at your senior grades. And about $6k a year.
It's only undergrad. From there you can go anywhere, including top US grad schools if that's your thing. I paid my own way through my public Canadian university and easily got into the top school in my field for a PhD. Once there, I did just as well as my Ivy trained peers so clearly I wasn't shortchanged on education.
5
If a person can make a "donation" to get a favored but less than bubble kid into a university, that person is paying for admission and should not be able to report the payment to the IRS as a donation on the tax return.
The only problem so far with AdmissionsGate is that the prosecution has limited its reach to the mastermind, William Singer, and some parents.
But what about the students? They knew they didn't have learning disabilities that entitled them to take untimed tests. They knew that most kids in their high school didn't get flown across the country to take the ACT. They knew they weren't on the crew team or the tennis team.
Olivia Jade Giannulli, the cretinous daughter of Lori Laughlin, cheated her way into USC, and knew what she was doing. Why? Because college application websites require students to declare that the applications they're submitting are their own work, so Gianulli is guilty either way: either she had no knowledge of what was being submitted on her application, in which case it wasn't her own work; or she created the application knowing its contents to be false. It is not enough for Gianulli to be bounced by her sponsors. She needs to be kicked out of USC so her seat can be made available to a student who actually deserves it. The same goes for the other cheating students. But perhaps they're too stupid to be humiliated.
Also to blame: all the guidance counselors at the high schools who knew or should have known the situation; all the college admissions staffs for the same reason; and all of the college admissions deans for the same reason. They should all lose their jobs.
College admissions today is a complete and utter farce, rotten to its core.
10
The current press claim that only a single student was aware of the scam sounds improbable if not impossible.
Allegedly, some of the students with private, proctored exams had their answers “corrected”/altered by proctors in real-time. If so, certainly those students are aware of the improprieties involved.
I’ve read the daughter(s) of the ‘Full House’ actress that were recruited for USC crew posed for photos in a crew boat or rowing machine, which is concerning for foreknowledge.
Some students allegedly also had tests taken by someone else falsely on their behalf. It’s theoretically possible that if this was a re-do SAT/ACT exam or a 1st try of the alternative test (i.e. they’d taken the SAT but the ACT was being taken falsely on their behalf) that some students never knew.
This should only be possible, however, if the application for the test/re-test was completed by their parents/Singer. The parents/Singer would also needed to have intercepted/redirected any mail/email etc. that would have informed students that they were scheduled to take the test, notification of test results, etc. so the students never knew the repeat/alternative test was ever even taken.
Allegedly, Singer submitted false applications for several students especially re: athletics. Therefore, certain students apparently didn’t even know they were being recruited for sports teams.
Obviously, the entire system has major problems at many levels. Major revamp required.
1
So that's why they're called "elite."
2
Wait. Lori Laughlin and her husband paid $250,000 each to get their daughters into USC? USC is perfectly good school, but in what circles do people swoon upon learning you went there? Something tells me Laughlin’s daughters aren’t the only ones whose “credentials” may be lacking.
10
It was probably local & maybe has a lax reputation.
People paid for Wake Forrest & UT Austin as well.....what was the big draw there? Some special program the kid wanted to participate in?
As usual with these things, somebody probably didn’t get what they thought was a fair cut in this game!!
So, they “ratted” on the operation, as Trump would say!
2
A lot of scandals for the University of Southern California these past couple of years...
Maybe next there should be an investigation regarding the huge numbers of Chinese who barely know English who are granted admission there.
9
The operative term in this saga is "big money" as in the many 10s of millions made gaming the system with "look the other way" Wall Street insider trades, money laundering with luxury real estate and related. Big Money. And no regulatory oversight.
Those who who work hard, play by the rules with their children stressing over college entrance exams and time pressure... Sorry.
We have become a dystopia, a neo-feudal society and few can conjure up the courage to acknowledge the obvious.
12
College is a big business today. Cost are going up cause administration salaries, sport coaches salaries, and faculty pays in R1 univeridities, especially the top 30-50 schools, are very high. Admission process involves low salaried employees so what do you expect? The affluent parents in US and Fareast use “coach” who, i believe, have contacts with employees in select universities to push their candidates. This issue is not limited only to the ultra wealthy as the news media and indictments have puported.
So what are the exhalted academics doing - sleeping like the financial regulators prior to the great financial recession? The curious thing is none of universities are yet to comment on the ongoing situation. I am happy this has come out in the open and i hope that universities close such loopholes in the admission process.
2
There is just too little sunlight shining onto the dark sausage making plant that is the admissions office. While institutional interest of the school and the broader student body may benefit from a big donation or revenue generating big-sports athletes, why do crew and sailing coaches get quota without closer vetting by the admissions offices? Universities might as well reserve a certain portion of the incoming class spots to open bidding to maximize school revenue rather than having all sorts of inefficiencies which allow unscrupulous middlemen like Singer to exploit.
4
I asked my daughter to apply to some of the elite schools outside the state. She refused to apply. Graduated from state college. Then I asked her go to medical school. She said no. Then, I asked her try for one year and if you don’t like it drop out. She said she doesn’t want to waste a medical seat. But, she went on and became a doctor with a Ph.D at the end of her name instead of an M.D. She has great career and happy. Just wondering if these parents ever heard what they children want to do.
7
This unfortunate episode further devalues an Ivy League Education by declaring to the world that true merit is not a requirement for admission. Rather, special circumstances rule the admissions process and instead of academic achievement the Admissions Committee select applicants on the basis of legacy, bribery and race. Qualified applicants should not apply unless they are prepared to make a large financial contribution or if they self-identify as an under-represented minority.
1
All of the Ivy League colleges, Andcthe outstanding universities such as USC, UCLA, Need to immediately eliminate Legacy Admissions in order to really level the admissions war playing field.
Students whose parents are not one per centers must be given a fighting chance to win a seat in the college big league. Giving these students a fighting chance to really win a college big league seat is a victory for that student, their parents, their school system, not to mention the teachers who helped guide and encourage that student to work hard and pay the price for that level of success.
3
Another interesting facet in all this is the fact that it's harder to get into these top-tier schools than it is to stay in them once admitted.
Once in, how many of these kids do well? Or at least well enough to continue there? I would better probably all, or nearly all, and not with extensive tutoring.
Does this go to the issue of whether the kids themselves should be expelled? If they've done well enough so far? Hard to say.
1
Every one of those rich parents who played the system should not only serve time and pay hefty fines, but also should be required to pay all of the college education costs of a disadvantaged student--and I mean pay for EVERYTHING!
5
If you are caught in possession of stolen property, it is taken from you, even if you didn't know it was stolen. Students in possession of stolen college opportunities should lose them as well.
14
Maybe it would help if wealthy people had smarter kids, or taught them to excel through hard work and diligence.
10
Right. The schools are victims. They just didn’t see the elephant in the room. And Mr. Goldberg, the spokesperson for the College Board, justifies their policies and didn’t see any evidence of cheating either. Sure. Am I the only one who finds all of this hard to b believe?
7
I really enjoyed the stunning cluelessness of Meghan McCain on The View this morning. She called out Lori Laughlin’s husband and the so-called Hollywood elites for looking down their noses at Arizona State, a school she is so proud the Mccain family supports. But apparently not enough for her to actually go there. She went to Columbia for Art History. And her conservative sister in privilege chose UPenn.
And yes, I say chose. Because despite acceptances in the single digits for us peasants, virtually every child of privilege or politics seems to make the cut for the Ivies. As long as THEY choose the cachet of so-called elite schools, their lectures to the masses will ring hollow.
12
“He also suggested that the university might make changes to its admissions process in response to the case. “
That’s not enough.
2
Education is all profit driven. Regardless of the so called non profit status. It would be interesting to learn if these totally undeserving students actually performed worse, better or same as the SAT, ACT legitimate scores. I suspect these scores do not reflect academic success rather just serves the profit center for this higher education industry.
2
This is really and truly disgusting but is a sign of the moral bankruptcy our nation is experiencing. It is unfortunately always about the money!! Maybe 70% income tax rates really do need to return!
Two thoughts come to mind: (1) remove NCAA level sports activities from colleges as they bring in too much money and are ripe for abuse (or have colleges be able to waive the rule and give up their 501(c) (3) exemption from income taxes), and (2) take away the income tax exemption for any college engaged in this activity.
7
"Also on Wednesday, the University of Texas at Austin announced that it had fired its men’s tennis coach, Michael Center, who was charged with taking a bribe of $100,000 from Mr. Singer in 2015 in exchange for recruiting a student who was not a competitive tennis player."
It is impossible that only the tennis coach knew that the recruited student was not a competitive tennis player. Either the player never showed up for the team or, if he did, it would be immediately clear to even a casual observer of the game that he did not belong there.
And this is likely true of all the other "athletes" that were admitted in this fraud -- it goes deeper than one rogue administrator.
11
I am a grizzled old electrical engineering professor who has watched the downward slope of higher education in this country increase for quite a number of years now. This latest incident somehow does my heart good, exposing as it does the conduct of university administrations.
Long may it wave.
10
Hmm this goes some small way to explaining something I long found puzzling - the mediocrity of so many people in very well paid prestigious and senior positions.
7
This is a great example of exactly why educational elitism still occurs and perpetuates the advancement of those navigating within these alumni circles with very few credentials other than wealth. Wealth with no moral compass is a recipe for destruction!
3
Don't anyone think for a minute Loughlin or many of the other parents caught up in this will be contrite, apologetic and accept blame. I can just hear their lawyers, they will claim their clients were victims of a con, that they just had their childs best interest at heart. Most of them, having had no prior arrest history will get off with probation, court costs and minimal fines. And this isn't a Hollywood example of any publicity is good publicity. This is a scandal that will only bring scorn, rightly earned, on its receipients.
10
I’m confused. If students in a good college are intellectually unqualified to be there, how do they pass the courses? Do the parents have to bribe the professors too?
4
It sounds to me like:
1) jail time for parents;
2) immediate expulsion for students admitted under false pretenses;
3) rescind the degrees of those who graduated (they can always apply to the Trump University once it is up and running again)
8
These people also know that such degrees hardly matter in real life and those children will inherit powerful positions anyway- irrespective of degrees or what they learn in such courses.
Academic degrees and standardized tests lost most of its values since last 4 decades. It mainly started after Reagan became president as he transformed it to just another for-profit industry and a means to supply cheaper and easily exploitable employees to various employers, including universities themselves. Cost to buy such expensive degrees are disproportionately high unless the student has some God father or Golf buddy to gift them lucrative positions in either Govt or private sector.
Gradually both talent & people with leadership quality are systematically destroyed. And more we destroy genuine talents/leaders more we see course promising to convert donkeys into race horses by "innovation" or "leadership" type courses.
American higher education system is not only the most expensive but also among the most corrupt and fast declining in quality, as per published data. Many very mediocre & morally bankrupt people are recruited as faculties. Nepotism & other form of corruption are all around. Academia became a very closed system and like any other closed and self-regulating system, it also became rotten and self-serving to its core.
4
I really want to know some things here and I'll use Lori, Massimo, and Olivia as examples. So the parents get Olivia set up for entrance to USC. Her SAT score is falsified and she is poised to enter USC as a strong student and a competitive rower. Yay. Lori and Massimo fly a USC flag from their roof. But you don't get into college solely on your SAT score. What about the USC application? College applications are a job of work: you are submitting high school transcripts (high GPA required), writing a stand-out personal essay, getting solid letters of recommendation (not from your mom) and assembling all other information the admissions office requires. So did Lori and Massimo bribe their way past the application process? And what about the hoax about the rowing? Don't the sports staff at the school need proof? E.g., letters from former coaches, records from competitions, maybe a couple trophies, a few videos. Did L and M bribe their way past these qualifications? And last, what did they have in mind for Olivia's grades throughout the 4 years? (I daresay Olivia, on her own, would flunk out of USC before the first term was over.) How were her parents planning on getting her through school? Don't they want a degree for Olivia out of all this chicanery? I just don't get it. All of the 765 families who participated in this slime fest look soooooo bad. And the schools? They look even worse. Institutions of higher learning. Sure.
9
At some point Americans are going to wake up to the fact that our top-tier universities are frauds. Harvard's endowment is worth an estimated $37.1 billion; Yale's $25.8 billion - they're glorified casinos masquerading as educational institutions courtesy of guaranteed student loans and wealthy narcissists.
Remember that Harvard promoted Larry Summers as its president - that would be the same man who declared women's brains can't do math and promised us that security backed mortgages and CDOs were nothing to worry about. But he was the darling of Wall Street and that's what mattered to Harvard. And the same institution which pompously declares its great commitment to "diversity" and social progress is the same Harvard that busts its campus cafeteria employee's union. $37.1 billion endowment and it can't pay dining hall workers a decent wage.
7
The universities are portraying themselves as victims:
"Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, wrote: “As the indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated by a former coach who no longer works at the university. We do not believe that any member of the Yale administration or staff other than the charged coach knew about the conspiracy.".
That is pathetic. Student athletes who have never even participated in the sport! Any college that allows its admissions process to be so easily corrupted is guilty in this. The universities are complicit by their own negligence, and claiming victimhood puts them on the same level as the cheaters.
243
@mg
In light of the fact that these colleges employed the coaches who accepted the bribes, it does take chutzpah for the schools to claim to be victims of this scheme. If a Wall Street firm employed someone who was arrested for insider trading, would anyone shed tears for the firm? Doubt it. Seems the schools themselves need to vet more closely the people recruiting for their teams.
34
@mg
Right. If the universities truly want to verify information about students, it can be easily done. Call former schools. Go online. Find pictures of the actual applicants to see whether they match the pictures in the profiles of the "all-star athletes." Easy-peasey!
14
@mg So should colleges raise tuition another 5% for salaries of admissions staff member whose job it is to track down the liars lurking in 15,000 applicants? Colleges are under great pressure to contain costs and the price of processing one application goes up every year as admissions staff try to do holistic admissions. Tracking applications, marketing, reading detailed application files are all expensive. Now, colleges are also expected to find the liars?
1
A number of posts below question or downplay the benefit of attending an elite or Ivy League college. I have some direct insight on this:
When I graduated HS back in the 70s, I had been accepted to Columbia but wasn't eligible for financial aid and didn't want to incur the debt or saddle my (single) mother with the expense. I went to a state school instead (Stony Brook) and convinced myself that I could receive just as good an education in my prospective major, physics. And as far as education goes, I believe I did.
Fast forward a few years, I went to a second tier law school, but managed to get hired as an associate at a large Wall St. law firm, where Harvard undergrad-Harvard law (or similar pedigrees) were common among the associates.
My experience over 5 years in that environment is that there is far more to the college (and professional school) than the education received. I never felt comfortable or "fit in," while many of my fellow associates knew how to make all the right moves to advance and get noticed.
Going to the elite college grooms you for the elite positions out there. You are among many fellow students whose parents are generally very successful, so good employment contacts are more readily made. And you also learn/expect to belong there, to walk the walk.
24
@Dan88 based on my personal experience, it's not so much the college, but rather whether you were raised in a wealthy family, that determines whether you will feel equipped to "walk the walk" and "fit in" at the elite law firms.
4
How about going into an area of law where you are truly serving society and making people’s lives better? I suspect you don’t need an elite pedigree for this kind of work.
1
Research has shown that graduates of prestige schools are no more successful than those attending public universities. The ivy league schools would lose money if people realized the truth.
This sort of fraud will continue to happen as long as schools buy into the College Board. I would hold them equally complicit. A few years ago the University of California announced it was going to drop the SAT from its admissions criteria. The howls from parents and the CB were enough to get the UC system to back down and to continue to require the exam.
The SAT in no way predicts how well a student will do in college. HIGH SCHOOL predicts how well. If a student works hard in high school and earns good grades, it will continue. Kids who slack off do not get into premier schools, or at least they shouldn't. By artificially boosting scores these parents pawned off their lazy kids as stars, but I'm fairly certain their high school grades were either highly inflated or merely mediocre.
Get rid of the SAT and ACT and I'd be willing to bet the playing field would be more level for everyone.
BTW -- you should look into what the CEO of the College Board (Educational Testing Service) makes in a year. It's supposedly nonprofit. The CEO earns seven figures.
82
@Gwhizrd Losing the SAT or ACT will create another issue which is how do you compare a 4.0 from a high achieving High School like Palo Alto High against a 4.0 from a school with a much less competitive student body? I served on the admissions committee at a top UC school and can tell you that the essays are basically useless because it's very difficult to verify who wrote or edited the document. The fact is that there are far more qualified students than slots at the top universities, and as long as we all worship at the steps of those top schools this madness will never end.
15
@Gwhizrd
Getting rid of the objective SAT or ACT is certainly a graver mistake: indeed, we must recall that up to 86% of our nation's high school graduates are not college-ready and need remedial courses; this clearly highlights the bogus graduation requirements -- so subjective that the common joke is "many of our graduates can't even read the diplomas they are allowed to march with each June!"
Arguing for primarily a school-based college-readiness evaluation can only come from defenders of our abjectly failing school enterprises, even the affluent of which are saturated with unaccountable and dubious educators.
11
@Gwhizrd Perhaps the more serious problem is that parents and students pay too much attention to SAT and ACT. Lots of kids with near-perfect SATs get dumped. Better study rowing or water polo.
8
I do not feel sorry for the kids of these rich parents. If my 15 year old knows what it takes to get into a good college, don't tell me these 18 year olds knew nothing about this scam unless they got through high school without researching colleges, acceptance rate, SAT scores. Throw these students out of the college that got them there by cheating the system. An institute of higher learning should have zero tolerance policy for students and parents like them.
178
These students won’t be thrown out. This is a massive and rampant problem. It is a system. The colleges cannot bite the hand that feeds them.
4
@ALN
There is no way these privileged students did not know what was being done for them. They went through all those years of schooling and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they get diagnosed with a learning disability? Seriously? How about the students who had someone take the test for them? When they got their scores to a test they didn't take, you mean to tell me they didn't know? These are arrogant students who believe their wealth entitles them to unearned privileges. That is the world they live in. They should all be kicked out of the colleges they attend so students who deserve to be in these elite institutions can be part of the learning community. The only thing these affluent students are learning is that money can buy almost anything.
16
There is official bribery of universities (by big donors) and unofficial bribery (of coaches). They're both still bribery, except the first one gets you a name on a building and the other sends you to prison. The idea that universities need special admissions for big donors' kids is silly and untrue. It's like saying the judicial system needs litigants to bribe judges otherwise the court system would cost too much! We should end all bribery in university admissions.
61
@Catherine You're simply naive about schools not needed spots for the big donors. Schools need the money to fund research, hire great faculty, and provide facilities for the students. That money sometimes comes without strings attached, but more often than not, it doesn't. I have no issue with a school taking a student in exchange for $20M if it's above board - the entire student body will benefit. It's unfortunate that another deserving student doesn't get the slot, but then how do you square that with the fact that thousands of other students then miss out on a new lab, an amazing professor, or a new library?
5
@Juarezbear It's still bribery, it's just bribery you happen to like. Bribery that has social utility. But the utility is not as great as you think: the average endowment of the universities mentioned here is $16B. A $20M donation is ~0.1% of that. They can afford the new lab without making special exceptions, and often kids are accepted for far, far less than a donation in the tens of millions. We could say exactly the same thing about any other social institution. The post office would work better if people bribed to get their packages delivered faster. But that's not how social institutions should be run.
33
@Juarezbear All your examples are bogus. Who needs a new library in the Internet era? The student facilities have turned into glitzy health clubs. An "amazing" professor? Most are taught by TAs. Now a new football coach, that's worth real money!
8
There is too much weight given to the supposed prestige of an Ivy League degree. I got accepted by Harvard and Yale Colleges in 1962 and chose instead a small Ohio liberal arts college. I found that I was not alone in making that choice. It turned out to be a good one.
14
I had the opportunity to attend a private elite school however I was unable to do so because of financial reasons. Instead I attended a public university I could afford. People would ask me whats wrong with you? Passing on a great school! I would say who cares a school is a school! I still feel that way!
7
For USC, this latest scandal seems to be an improvement over the tidal wave of disasters of the past few years.
Things are looking up for the Trojans!
8
I thought I immigrated from India but more and more it looks I immigrated to India. This is the level of corruption I thought I left behind. It is disheartening!
28
Now it's time to look into all the rampant cheating and fraud that goes into getting many students from China into elite universities in the U.S.
21
The University of Southern California had the largest number of athletic official accused of accepting bribes. It is a university prone to scandal, with a history of ignoring bad behavior by its employees. In 2016 the long serving dean of the medical school was fired because of his use of hard drugs, and his predilection for partying with prostitutes. Concerns over his behavior had been reported to USC administrator, with no action taken. After years of complaints a university gynecologist was fired for sexual abuse of patients. USC has agreed to pay abused patients over $200 million to settle law suits. USC's president was forced to resign over the scandal. Insofar as USC is typical of major universities their reaction to even criminal behavior is: hear no evil; see no evil; speak no evil.
17
@Stan D.-
It’s called “the University of Spoiled Children” for a reason.
4
state universities are full of accomplished professors, but the quality of one's education is determined by the caliber of student sitting to one's left and right. better to be an average performer among smart peers than to be the tallest midget in an over-sized high school.
so i understand doing whatever it takes to get your kid into a top school. i would not score black market adderall so my kid can add twenty points to his sats, but i'd turn a blind eye if an older sibling did. it's a corrupt system: why be a stickler re fair play?
i don't blame the racketeering consultants, corrupt parents and plausibly innocent children. the witless admissions departments, however, should be shunned. almighty yale university: what a fraud!
2
@orionoir
I think it depends on the kid. Some kid thrive and really find themselves when they are the tallest midget. They can experiment and try things and maybe discover skills they didn't know they had. You might feel more confident taking physics at the University of Connecticut than at Yale. So you'd never take it at Yale, but you do at CT - and turns out it's your thing. Or you feel more comfortable stepping out being a leader and honing those skills among midgets before entering the big world. Among giants, maybe you never step out at all.
2
@Syliva you're right; and yale vs uconn supports your point well. as a faculty brat at the former, it seemed to me heaven on earth -- bright people doing cool things with near-infinite resources. still, elitism gets oppressive in a hurry. if you go to a big name school, you are surrounded by people attracted to big names. nevertheless, i want my kids to know what it feels like to do their best. show me a big fish in a small pond, i'll show you an arrogant fish who's kidding himself,
The question for Yale's president is, "What did Yale not know and when did it first not know it?
17
This saga seems to illustrate the power of coaches—even in some “minor sports”—when it comes to admissions policies. The average 12-year old could have Googled high school sports rosters and discovered these frauds yet the admissions officers didn’t raise a finger to verify the corrupt coaches’ claims.
Truly astonishing.
Lucky thing Rick Singer got caught. His next caper might have involved Fort Knox.
6
$25 Million? It was Fort Knox. Sort of.
Whew. Glad those tax breaks the middle-class financed for the rich are being used to get those lower IQ, underachieving rich kids into the ivy leagues!
22
Are these colleges going to expel all the students involved?
10
@Franz Deutsch-
Probably not. It opens them up to waves of expensive civil litigation. Even bribe-taking coaches might skate.
Singer is toast, though.
Perhaps Lori Loughlin's daughter should be exiled to Arizona State, where she was accepted in the first place. The length of mom's prison sentence should equal the time it takes her to earn a diploma in Tempe. Given some of her recent remarks about collegiate life that could be awhile.
17
Elite colleges look favorably on students who have international experience, are involved in many extracurricular activities, and volunteer time to charities. Publishers and other corporations only accept interns who can come and live and work in New York City for a summer with no pay.
A poor, but brilliant, kid may be working after school at McDonalds or Walmart to help support her or his family. Is this considered extracurricular, international experience, or charitable volunteerism? Will they have the same chances as the kids whose parents buy their way into college?
We have to do better than just shrugging our shoulders and saying "Life isn't fair."
17
There should be no question that these students' admission acceptance should be revoked. However, they should be allowed to apply to the school again, accurately representing their qualifications, and considered for admission in the same way that (presumably) most students are.
10
Did these colleges even look at the kids' high school transcripts? We've been told for a long time that the test scores are only one component of the admission decision, with the transcript a much better indicator of success. As for unqualified "athlete" applicants being accepted, well, just one more reason I have lost respect for D1 sports programs.
11
A great opportunity to refer to Michael Moore’s findings from Finland in his documentary Where To Invade Next and rethink standardized testing of teenagers.
If this a result, such pressurized emphasis on a standardized test itself should be called into question, along with the tests own profiteers.
Other ways to approach educational milestones exist.
6
What's obvious to me is that each and every player in the corporations that administer or own parts of the testing process ie "the college board " and the "ETS" needs to submit all personal and family financial records to a blue ribbon panel aka akin to Robert Mueller , to assure us of their honesty. This case demonstrates that innocent until proven guilty works only after we see that the entire entities are not totally corrupted. My guess is the harder that tree is shaken the more grifters will fall out. I fear it's immense. The damage to USA educational integrity makes USA gymnastics issues look like child's play. This is the entire underpinnings of our meritocracy. We finally HAVE A NATIONAL EMERGENCY.
7
I share this sentiment when an elderly college teacher and his peers reflect on their lives:
“We made plenty of mistakes, but we never tripped anybody to gain an advantage, or took illegal shortcuts when no judge was around. We have all jogged and panted it out the whole way.”
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
12
How many other psychological records did that psychologist falsify, and over what period of time?
In what state(s) is the psychologist licensed, and has anyone formally notified the licensing boards in that/those state(s)?
Has anyone notified the psychologist's malpractice insurer? It may not want to renew the coverage.
10
My husband an ethical psychologist has for 15 years stated the biggest scam in his industry is rich parents paying for an attention deficit diagnosis. And sadly many psychologists succumb easily.
5
This scandal will not change the well-off suburban parents who:
work on their kids' projects, request extra time for papers and tests, hire $90.00/hr tutors for their middle school students who average B's, spend $100.00 for Lululemon attire and Vineyard Vines T-shirts for said kids, take school days off for extended vacations, call the Vice-Principal to complain about a grade that could keep their child off the honor roll, threaten to sue the school for suspending a kid who did something horribly wrong, buy smart phones and iPads for the kids when they turn 8, or a host of other entitlement situations not listed.
As Cher sang, 'And the beat goes on.....'
21
To think that colleges that have a major responsibility for this would be absurd. Where is the accountability and oversight? How did admissions directors not see the red flags here? How did they not check applications against the high school records provided? How come when an excellent candidate for a college is denied they have no problem finding the smallest red flag? How did the College Board approve double extra time accommodations for students who didn’t even have Individualized Educational Plans at their high schools (very difficult accommodations to normally receive)?
What about these corrupt coaches? The NCAA needs to be all over this. Athletic Directors need to be fired for not overseeing the entire recruiting process. Colleges implicated in this need to have scholarships stripped from all of their sports, at the very least.
Total shame.
9
This story shows that some people will do a lot to get their kids ahead, even do something illegal and risk going to jail. A big question is why? Is it fear that if they don't, they are failing as parents, or because they are so caught up in status that they want the same for their children. I don't know the answer, but it does make me fearful for our country and its current culture, but it also makes me hopeful that many are seeing that we have gone too far in this gilded age and need to make a change. I applaud those who stepped up and reported this behavior.
10
My solution:
1. Base admission on grades, only (each college sets its own standards)
2. Disregard standardized tests
3. Disregard student essays
4. Disregard extracurriculars
5. Disregard all information about parents
The end result would be a fair system, and a decrease in student worry and hopelessness.
What we have now is a system that privileges the wealthy, and punishes all others.
The main casualty is the emotional well being of our nation's youth.
And some wonder why teenage suicide is on the rise.
7
@Norm
Basing it only on grades would lower the quality of the student body. Grades are in large part a reflection of a person's ability to follow the rules, understand academic culture and advocate for yourself within that system - things that actually privilege the wealthy. Real brilliance is often found among lower GPA students. Also, not all schools and teachers grade the same, and not all classes are equally rigorous. An A from one school is not equal to an A from another.
9
I think you misunderstand what universities and colleges are really for. They are places where grades are given and they are measured that way on purpose. Academic achievement is the whole point. Not some social experiment. If someone isn't good at school then they shouldn't be in college or university that's the point.
2
@Syliva: I share your doubts, but for grades.
If an A at a school puts the student in the 90th percentile, I’d like to see that student admitted to most any college, especially all state-affiliated public ones. Admitting the top students from all schools, levels the playing field between lower and higher quality schools, encouraging socioeconomic diversity.
“Legacy admissions” is the old “legitimate” lopsided admissions system. All of it has to go!
This is just the tip of a cheating iceberg. Kids of rich parents cheat in high school or go to private schools with easy grading. Rich parents pay people to complete college admission forms. Kids cheat when they get to these top institutions, in myriad different ways, to get good GPAs. Rich parents game the college financial aid system in order to get more assistance than poorer but more honest and deserving parents. The cheating continues on into the business world where hiring is based on who you know not what you know. Cheating even extends to professional exams, as per the expose of radiologists cheating on tests.
5
This is so refreshing. Those who are our 'bettors' are being unmasked. From Florida spas to Ivy League elitism, the emperors are being recognized as having no cloaking, the privilege is no longer invisible.
9
I guess rich folks can’t cope with the idea their kids are ordinary. And mine worked so hard.
12
This makes me wonder what would happen if these schools hired an outside firm to do a deep dive into the accuracy of the applications for their current students. How many resume lies? How many essays essentially written by someone else? Of course the schools have no interest in that and I'm guessing they are working furiously to sweep this under the rug. The indictment says Singer helped 800 families. Where are the rest of them?
10
The playwright David Mamet wrote a defense against his actor friends by proclaiming “Not guilty, but don’t do it again.” Apparently he believes all parents are subject to this temptation. But when do you so, aren’t you cheating not only on the exams but also the children? There are many parents out there who believe that the only true advancements in life comes from their childrens’s development of their innate abilities, not the pocketbook of well-heeled and doting parents. The merit system that we supposedly have has been skewed from the beginning. My respects are with parents who don’t cheat.
4
The disability accommodation for extra time is predominantly granted to students in wealthy areas. So. Mr. College Board spokesman, why is that the case? And why are you defending what is an obvious racket involving rich parents and ethically challenged psychologists?
10
I am glad the organizations that these parents were employed by fired them. The parents clearly demonstrated a lack of integrity in their personal dealings. They were also undermining their children and teaching them horrible life lessons.
True story: parents managed to get their son into medical school but the medical school expelled their son after one year for poor grades. Medical school would not even give him a gentlemen's C. He was not applying himself and flunking all of his courses. Actually he was acting out against the life script his parents created for him. Would you want someone like this as your physician, accountant, lawyer, financial adviser?
11
@Angela No, but they are.
There's been a notable silence from Trump on the subject of cheating and bribing to get an otherwise unqualified kid into a top tier school. Why? Because he knows that the minute he opens his mouth on the subject, the demands that he make publicly available the academic record that allegedly justified his acceptance to Wharton will increase exponentially.
14
Yes, it is really interesting to find the children don’t seem to know their parents are cheating for them. But then again they probably are curious about anything either just one of the reasons are such bad students. On the other hand, they can probably look you right in the face and lie to you and you wouldn’t even know it. I’m sure one part of being one-tenth percenters is trying to pretend that you’re just like everyone else. It makes me think of slaveholding families who acted like their wealth was something that they had earned instead of the work stolen from slaves. The level of self deception and denial in such peoples lives is likely beyond anything that ordinary people can even comprehend.
7
The crimes are egregious, and should definitely merit more than slaps on wrists.
Still, I can't help but worry about and feel bad for the kids involved--even the ones who, having been raised by parents who apparently lack moral compasses and are impossibly entitled, may have gone along with the schemes to please their parents, etc. Yes, by that age one would hope that they could think and act independently and ethically, and yet they really are still quite young and under their parents' influence.
And kids (and adults!) can be very cruel and vicious, particularly these days with the ubiquity of social media. I am afraid of how some of the kids involved may handle--or be unable to handle--the shame, scrutiny, and vicious comments. Did their parents neglect to also consider the damage they might potentially do to their own children? I'm afraid that some of the kids may harm themselves. Yes, there must be consequences, but I hope that people are also paying attention to their emotional well-being.
4
I'm sorry, I find it hard to be sympathetic to the "plight" of these privileged children. The children I'm concerned with are those who were denied rightfully-deserved admission because of the exploitation of familial wealth. The children of privilege will be just fine.
2
@Opinionated , as the mother of a young man who went through the college admissions process a few years ago(with no money for things like test prep, etc.,), and who is familiar with struggles of other bright, hard-working students navigating the now astonishingly complicated and competitive process without the kinds of "help" those privileged children of wealthy parents have had access to, I couldn't agree more with your sentiments about the reprehensible disregard for fairness. That is sickening and infuriating.
But I can't just assume that the kids involved in the scandal will necessarily be "just fine." We don't know what the family dynamics are, and children of wealthy people can be just as vulnerable as anyone else--certainly we've all heard of children from privileged backgrounds struggling with depression, addiction, and suicide too. The fact that these parents were willing to spend so much money to help their children cheat their way into good schools doesn't in any way indicate that they have been supportive in the genuine ways children need them to be.
They are still young and, although they will need to suffer the consequences for what they and their parents have done, they don't deserve to be destroyed for it. They need to learn from it, if at all possible at this point.
A big part of this problem is that athletes have a different set of academic standards than the general student population. Combine that with sports where coaches are paid a pittance, and the system is set for this kind of shenanigans.
11
This is not surprising. Simple greed. It did not start here either. Parents giving money to top schools and then their kids attending those schools has gone on forever. This group though sunk to a lower level- if that is even possible.
2
David Mamet, the famous playwright, just wrote an open letter about Ms. Huffman, in which he said..."A parent's zeal for her children's future may have overcome her better judgment for a moment...I know we parents would agree it is a universal phenomenon."
You can't make this up.
13
@mainesummers. He probably recommended Singer to her.
1
Like it or not, college admissions is a zero-sum process.
For every applicant accepted on a lie, another legitimately deserving one is turned away. The current scandal of cheating and rank mendacity is a form of theft with real victims, and the perps deserve to be brought to account just like any other larcenist.
President Trump is right about one thing; the system is rigged, but it is rigged for people like him, his progeny and the über wealthy who wink, nod and support his presidency with the same tactics they use to leapfrog their third-rate kids by criminally crashing the college admissions queue.
7
This may explain the origins of the SJW phenomenon on US with its obsession with forcing people to declare their "male white privilege". Some of the kids who arrive from wealthy backgrounds quickly feel guilt at how blatant their privilege is, while those who've come from poorer backgrounds via scholarships have a similar sense of shock.
My son graduated Summa Cum Laude, with honors, from a college in Michigan, after getting a fully paid scholastic scholarship. I don't even remember what his SAT or ACT scores were. But he did take the tests himself. At the time I was a single mom in the middle class.
He then graduated with a Master's in Public Policy from a university in DC. He was also chosen for a 6 week program at Oxford in the UK while getting his Master's.
I've always been proud of him, but more proud than ever of my son. After seeing the grifting and bribery of these parents, on behalf of their children, I'm ashamed for their children (who may not have known).
Thank you to the FBI for turning over another rock on the corruption of wealth, and ways that the wealthy can take advantage of the system, and worse, keep others from possibly being able to improve their lives.
4
@MotownMom: The details will trickle in.
Any child who gets double the allotted time to take the SAT for a bogus disability knows he/she enjoyed a fraud.
Any child —with little to no relatable athletic experience— who arrives on a sports admission, and then shows up to be excused, knows he/she enjoyed a fraud.
Schools should expel any student involved where investigation shows a likelihood of knowledge. Wouldn’t the number of innocents be a tiny number?
Too often, we start with “forgiveness”. Redemption demands something more. Each fraudulent admission robbed a qualified young applicant of a place in college.
4
Wow, Pretty gullible folks. I attended an elite private school for my MBA. 3-5% acceptance rate. There were 3 classes of us: the uplifts, the 10%ers who got in on brainpower, and those who got in the old-fashioned way — daddy making a contribution. One of my classmates openly refused a 3.5 in strategy the first semester (very critical to hold a 4.0 the first semester or forget about a summer internship/job offer from a investment bank ( when such things still existed) or a C-level consulting firm.) She made quite a fuss given “my father wrote a check for 1.5 MILLION dollars!!!!”. She eventually got her 4.0. Fun fact - despite the chasms between groups in terms of privilege , we all got along. After a fashion and on the surface, but no open hostility. It was just the way things were. And are. And ever have been.
8
You don’t think the kids whose parents bought their admissions didn’t know? I really doubt that. It just sets them up to cheat for their own kids in the future.
8
Why can’t more Americans resist the old prestige/status traps and spend the money on Bruce Springsteen tickets?
1
Students who participated in the scams need to be thrown out and have degrees rescinded. In fact, why aren’t they being charged as co-conspirators? Bad parenting begets bad kids.
11
I am still incredulous that this went on.
If I had a rich mother - i would have gone to Switzerland where the only classes are skiing and partying. You get a degree but you make all connections.
In my case, my mother had no money and Caltech gave me a scholarship.
Much is made about who is the victim.
And this is quoted here:
"....Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, wrote: “As the indictment makes clear, the Department of Justice believes that Yale has been the victim of a crime perpetrated..."
That's burying head in the sand or even sheer arrogance.
A man of his level would say, Yale needs to look in the mirror and ask how in the world one of its staff engaged in this scam.
As others have pointed out - this could be just a tip of an iceberg.
All these institutions and their heads are doing themselves a disservice by claiming victimhood.
And worse, inviting more of the same in future.
11
I have been surprised, bordering on shocked, at how much of the media coverage of and public opining on this situation has concluded it is only a difference in scale - rather than kind - from the ordinary machinations of the white, wealthy classes as they use contacts, donations and clubby relationships to ease their progeny into the premium institutions which they customarily inhabit.
But in these instances, parents authorized completely illegal activities - bribes, misrepresentations and lies for starters - to get an assured result. This corrodes to the very core of our society and certainly our academic institutions.
The parents are perpetrators of an ugly fraud and should be significantly punished.
4
And now comes the long line of mediocre people in great jobs telling the country that they shouldn’t worry about getting into Ivy League because it doesn’t matter and this is all so shocking. As I comment, I am watching Arne Duncan as exhibit A, saying exactly that. Oh yeah, HE went to Harvard.
4
this is sad and pathetic in so many ways. how about this: if your child is a weak student ,maybe he/she should skip college, at least for a few years. Sweep floors or deliver pizza for a while. It's honest work. Far better than wasting 4 expensive years on something the youngster doesn't want or isn't ready for. I think time away from school can help focus the mind, and it's an opportunity to develop the discipline necessary to do well at anything. I feel sorry for the kids who, because of the cheating, didn't get into the school they wanted. But they'll get opportunities elsewhere. In a way, I feel more sorry for those wealthy, deluded parents who could lose careers and face prison time because their kids couldn't do --or didn't want to do -- what their parents insisted on.
3
While the parents may be criminally charged (and should be), all of the children in this scam should be immediately expelled. They were complicit in the fraud and all have violated their respective schools' honor codes. These over indulged parents and children need to be taught that fraud, lies, and deceit have consequences.
7
All the kids need to be kicked out. Most of them were probably in on the plan and are complicit. They must all go in order to right this wrong. Every last one. Also, these terrible parents should be made to pay an amount equal to their bribe into a fund that benefits deserving scholarship students.
8
Another reason to ditch the use of the SAT and ACT in college admissions. Let the applicants show their accomplishments, not be judged on a trick and, apparently, corrupt test.
3
Thanks FBI. You're doing a great job.
8
The world needs ditch diggers too.
If you can not get into school on your merits, there are plenty of other honorable and proud ways to make your way in this world.
3
An IEP, done properly, would not be written for these students.
OK, I admit to being a principal who was scrupulous about justifying and creating legitimate IEPs. The F page has federal law behind it but I don’t know how fraudulent development would be charged. The F page lists the accommodations needed to fulfill the IEP. It has to be written as SMART goals.
What amazes me is that the scammers didn’t tell parents how to get 504 plans developed for their kids.
504 plans come under ADA guidelines and the power of the ADA law is ferocious.
Please excuse my rant. Special privileges have never surprised me, but I spent almost 50 years doing IEPs and 504 plans the way they are meant to be done and the hypocrisy makes me furious.
Those who can have always gamed the system which the cynic in me accepts.
But how dare they attack a system designed to help children.
Signing off now after I climb down from my high horse.
5
Somebody - PLEASE! - explain all the feigned outrage related to this story to me...
I remember seeing a movie called "Back to School" with Rodney Dangerfield way back in the 1980's that was literally based on exactly this kind of rich-guy-using-his-money-to-get-admitted-to-college scenario, although in that case it was the rich guy trying to get himself admitted, rather than his kid. Either way, did anybody really not know that rich people could buy their kids' way into elite universities? Seriously?
How many movies have included storylines where a well-to-do parent paid for a new building on campus in order to get their kid admitted to college? Caddyshack? Animal House? About a dozen others?
For the life of me, I can't understand what people are so outraged about. Rich people can buy influence and use their money to open doors that are closed to the rest of us. It has been like that... SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME!
Punishing the rich kids isn't going to level the playing field for any of the poor ones. Poor kids will still be overlooked, because they don't have the resources to make themselves known to the admissions people. If anything, a few upper-upper middle class kids, who can afford the extra-curriculars, glossy admissions portfolios, and who have tiger moms pushing them to work ever harder (at the expense of their childhoods) will be the only beneficiaries.
News flash: Life isn't fair and rich people have advantages the rest of us can't afford. Get over it!
1
The mastermind of this scheme said he "helped" 750 families use the "side door" of bribes and fake tests results and athletic credentials, but less than 30 have been indicated. What about the other families he helped through this illicit side door? Are they going to be held accountable?
Also, college athletics is stupid, wasteful and often exploits students.
Why are schools allocating admission slots for the tennis, soccer, and sailing teams, and spending money on what are basically hobbies for rich kids?
Why should a really smart kid who didn't learn to sail at the yacht club, or play tennis at the country club, have his tuition dollars used to subsidize these activities for other students?
Basketball and Football are money making machines for schools whose games are televised and certainly make financial sense for schools. But these sports exploit the athletes who generate millions of dollars in revenue they do not share in.
Let's get rid of the student athlete side door for sports that do not generate substantial revenue, as it does nothing for the students or the university, and figure out a way to share revenue from televised sports with the student athletes.
The current system is ridiculous. Why should being a really good soccer player or sailor get you into Yale or Stamford? Why do football players have to play for free?
5
It's hard not to believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Given the social status and social anxiety involved in which college a child attends, I bet it's more common than we previously thought. Frankly, it destroys the credibility of the entire process.
12
The American justice system is the best in the world. Or is it? I wonder. We all know without a shred of doubt that money buys "justice" and the lack of money in the justice system buys trouble, to the greatest imaginable extremes at both ends. Sometimes, as in this case, maybe a little real justice will prevail, but as they say, I will believe it when I see it.
18
When I went to college in 1985, applications processes were not the big business they are today. I went to Harvard, and many of my classmates (myself included) arrived on campus as weird, misshapen, socially awkward people who had a huge amount to learn about themselves and their world. Don't get me wrong - most students were also curious, interesting, super smart, and full, full of potential - and most have turned into amazing adults. I was lucky and am grateful. But at the time, even those of us who came from elite private high schools hadn't gone through the grooming process so common today. Kaplan SAT Prep classes hadn't become practically mandatory. There were no "admissions consultants." A friend of mine wrote one of her application essays in crayon. It wasn't a "thing" to pay tons of money to go to Costa Rica for a summer to practice Spanish and "build houses for the poor" - specifically so you could accrue international experience AND public service points on a college application. I am a professor now and deplore what has happened to college admissions. Not only do children of privilege get so much more help in preparing (and paying!) for college, but we are also turning elite high schools into places that churn out increasingly homogenized "high achieving," well-groomed, "well-rounded," cookie-cutter students. I miss the colorful quirky oddballs who only wanted to go to college to learn, not because they cared about status or a set of professional connections.
86
I really enjoyed reading your comment. It hit home with me on so many levels that I otherwise hadn’t realized until now, Thank you.
9
@CynthiaHoop
Do you think wealth inequality may have something to do with this?
Everyone wants a piece of the good life, but there's a whole lot less of that to go around now, isn't there? I can hardly blame parents for doing everything possible, including cheat, to stack the deck for their kid.
2
@CynthiaHoop I attended a middle class public high school in the suburbs of San Francisco in the 60's. One morning during my senior year I showed up for first period to the following announcement: "Today we're taking a test." Turned out to be the SAT. No warning. I did okay. Good thing too, cuz there were no do overs.
6
One of my kids attended an exclusive high school on financial aid. He often complained about how unfair it was that many kids in his class got extra time to finish their tests due to their learning disabilities. I heard anecdotally that the number was as high as 30%. In addition to getting coached on SATs, ACTs and essays, many kids had athletic college counselors and had family members that gave huge donations to top schools. These kids were accepted to top schools. In addition to academics, the high school provided a great social experience for my kid and me that we wouldn't have gotten at a public high school.
16
@Momo so true. If the college board wants to claim that the SAT is a predictor of college success - where, as in life, you are measured not just by what you can do but by how quickly you can do it - then everyone should get the same time allotment.
If you have a learning disability you by definition do not belong in a highly competitive college. Period.
14
@HenryParsons This is pretty heartless and not true at all. True geniuses are the ones who would not do well on SATs and ACTs due to learning disabilities - learning disability in everything but Math made John Nash who he was. Some kids have problems reading not because they are dumb but because they are born with bad eye-brain coordination limiting their processing speed. Other kids suffer from anxiety. The list goes on and on.
1
One certainly should have the opportunity, learning disability or not, to compete in a challenging academic environment. Would you exclude all students who might have disabilities of one kind or another? What a sad world you would create.
3
So as a graduate of Yale and as a daughter of non English speaking immigrants who toiled as a nursing home aide and a cement worker, I’m deeply saddened that someone sold out his access to my beloved alma mater. My parents had no money to pay access for anything except an SAT book, and there were many others like me who worked in the dining halls and at the library to make ends meet . I would disagree with those who think bribing staff and those who donate are one and the same . I think Yale has always gone above and beyond to diversify the student body, and I am grateful for the opportunities afforded by donors who came before me.
55
You raise an important point: the families who make donations to private universities hoping (no purchases guarantee) it will help their child's chances of gaining admission are often helping, directly or indirectly, to offset the costs of free or lowered tuition and grants made so that students whose families are of lesser means may attend and graduate without horrendously crushing debt.
Bribe-makers and bribe-takers and bribe-fixers do no such thing.
4
"I would disagree with those who think bribing staff and those who donate are one and the same . "
Better to the school than to some coach's pocket, but it is still "pay to play" for admission.
...Andrew
5
So, if you cheat on the tests you get in. If you bribe the admissions people you get in. If your father went there you get in. If someone makes a really large donation you get in. If you get an athletic scholarship you get in. If you pretend to play a sport, you get in. But if you study real hard and get good grades, your chances are just so-so. I'd say elite private schools are pretty much toast - who would ever trust their graduates again? It's like judging someone based on what country club they belong to.
135
@tony Exactly right. Elite universities are functioning as clubs for our country's wealthy youth, and attendance at one of these universities confers lifetime membership and benefits. But if these institutions did not function in this way, the wealthy would still find a way to differentiate their children from the rest of us and continue building wealth for another generation (they could all go join Mar-a-Lago or something). And there would be more room for the actual high-achieving youth of our country at these universities.
6
@tony This is called holistic admissions.
3
This may be the tip of the iceberg-
One would think there has to be more than ONE Mr. Singer college consultant to the rich and famous out there.
108
@mainesummers Not only that but Mr. Singer stated to clients he's been doing this for 20+ years and we only heard of recent cases. Someone alluded to a coach being compromised in 2012. There are many more people involved . . . I wonder if the statute of limitations or lack of evidence will save them.
5
Why aren't the colleges and universities expelling the students who were admitted with false ACT or SAT scores or false athletic credentials?
In submitting an application, the student should be 100% accountable for the information on the application. How could a student, who knew s/he didn't have a learning disability, be tricked into thinking that they were allowed extra time because of a learning disability? How could a student who flew to Texas or California to take a standardized test not know something was wrong when all their high school classmates were taking the tests at a local high school? How could a student who scored 1060 on the PSAT think they honestly scored 1400 on the SAT? How could a student know so little about their own college application that they didn't know they were applying as a star athlete? And if admitted as such, were now joining the ranks of NCAA Division I Athletes? The parents' behavior is abhorrent, immoral, and illegal. As parents should teach their children, actions have consequences. Sometimes bad choices that one person makes (e.g. a parent) have a very negative, even if unintended, impact on another person (e.g. a child). This is a critical life lesson. The children should not be allowed to remain at any of the universities. The admissions process is already stacked against poor and minority students. It would be criminal for these prestigious universities to allow the students whose applications were falsified to remain enrolled.
107
@DL
The universities should be expelling them. Perhaps these kids did not know their parents were committing felonies but they definitely knew they were cheating. There is absolutely no way these students did not know that what was going on was wrong.
I would think that each cheating student would withdraw from school immediately out of sheer humiliation.
6
since the scandal just broke it will take time for schools to investigate. several have said that students who cheated or falsified applications will be tossed.
5
I agree. They should have to start over the legal way and take their chances like our kids did.
5
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I’m not particularly angry about it. The rich always slide through. The rest of us have to work hard. They don’t.
18
@Zejee Getting angry won't necessarily accomplish anything, true. However, holding all offenders accountable may have a chilling effect on others. One can only hope.
4
@Zejee
I wonder how many lawsuits are forthcoming by all those applicants who had real "rowing" skills and were rejected by USC.
1
@Zejee
Now that I would call real cynicism.
1
"The College Board considers all reasonable requests for accommodations — such as large print, Braille, or extended time — needed by students with documented disabilities,” he said."
My daughter needed report of psychometric testing and IEP documentation dating back to middle school in order to be granted extended time for the SAT. This was in a public high school in Westchester, NY in 2009
I wonder how many high school officers were participating in this scheme
17
@claudia she shouldn’t have gotten it anyway. No one should. It’s like tryouts for a club soccer team providing a bigger goal for the kids who aren’t good at soccer. What’s the point?
If the time limit for the SAT is totally irrelevant as a predictor of college success we shouldn’t be using it at all.
4
I know a couple who has a 4 year old child and since the child was in utero, they have been making donations to YALE to ensure he has the best chance of being accepted when he's in high school. They also live in one of the best school districts in Los Angeles (there are few) and they will chose to send their child to private school instead of going locally where their tax dollars are currently allocated. To say the system is rigged is an understatement. Education is a for-profit business that solicits parents to participate based on entitlement, status and/or the fear that their child will not be able to acquire or continue the wealth that they themselves have amassed without going through the feeder of an elite education. If you’ve spent anytime in New York City, these stories are abundant. Pre-school is a high stakes competition where wealthy executives and bankers vie for their children’s position in a school in order to ensure one day they will get hired at Goldman Sachs.
This has been going on for years perpetuated by liberal and conservative elites and it should come as no surprise when more “socialist” minded people take issue, specifically with liberal elite’s institutional hypocrisy. We expect this from the Trumps and Kushners but the reality is that it’s been happening across the political spectrum because American wealth and fame is our highest value.
45
Our midwestern city has a few elite private schools. It is a given that over 25% of 9th graders ( happily) begin on " the plan" at their school, meaning that they get extra time for all their tests. Then, in early junior year, the school can send this supporting documentation with the invariably wealthy parents' request to ACT / SAT that their children get time and a half, double time, and private rooms for ACT/ SAT tests. ( usually numerous times) Also, these schools and parents know " the best" doctors to diagnose their normal kids with "processing disorders" . ( testing not usually covered under average insurance policies) Some kids " can't" shut out background noise-- hence they " need" private rooms. Some kids " can't work under time pressure ( the whole point of the ACT). This collusion between the private schools, parents, and doctors is accepted as a matter of course, thus enabling the private schools to claim how many top tier schools their graduates get into.
NO, the students are not in for a wake up call when they enter the " real world" -- because their "real world" of family equity companies and country club connections will remain one that rewards them no matter how little they work and truly achieve. They will never need to fend for themselves.
38
@rosep Unless of course the system changes, our job as Americans is to make sure it does. Enough.
4
What does it really take to get a spot on a Division 1 college team? You play sports for fourteen years, the last five focused on one: Rowing. At 5AM, you leave for training. It’s pitch dark, and you have a long day ahead. By 8AM, you are headed to school. With seven honors classes and standardized testing approaching, your free time at school is eaten up by studying, meeting teachers, and catching up on sleep. After school, it is back to practice. Through freezing rain and wind, you train 30 hours a week over four mornings and five afternoons. The 10 hours you get at home are for eating, doing homework, and sleeping. In the spring, you miss school for races. One day you’re at the national championships getting 2nd in the country, and the next you’re taking finals. Junior year you start the recruiting process. You send out a resume and recruiting forms and talk for hours with coaches to get to the next step: an official visit. Fly across the country, catch a cold on the way, endure jet lag, and miss 25% of your classes, but make sure to keep your GPA up! With the right height, weight and 2km erg score, you may get full support (guaranteed admission). Runners up can get soft support ( a coach's note on your application with no guarantee. This 18-year process will also cost over $250,000, but I can say with absolute certainty, your child will become an exceptionally talented athlete, a supremely confident student and someone to look up to.
45
@Betsy Greer (and daughter): I understand and value your daughter's hard work. But it is still wrong that a coach can "guarantee" admission to anyone.
5
Today I received an email from UCLA Alumni organization which hilariously displays UCLA's attempt to portray the university as a victim in this affair. It quotes an address last night by the Chancellor, Gene Block. I quote just one sentence from that address:
"Today’s indictment makes clear that UCLA, like the other universities, was the victim of an alleged crime."
There is only one sense in which the universities are victims in this affair. Normally, it is the university itself which receives the bribes from wealthy parents to get their undeserving kids admitted. But in this scheme, it was University faculty or entrance exam officials who received the bribes instead. That does not produce sympathy from me for the "victimized" universities.
27
A quote from Mr. Caplin in today’s Boston Globe has him (on tape) saying he was unconcerned about the moral implications of the transaction but about the damage to his daughter if it was discovered.
Wow.
37
@Greg - He didn't worry about the moral implications. Well, now he has to worry about the legal implications.
4
If you're a doctor in a wealthy area handing out dyslexia or ADD "diagnoses" purely so the patient (haha...) can get unlimited time on standardized tests, you're in the next crop of people headed to jail. Have fun.
31
@HenryParsons
Or a bone spur diagnosis for those who are afraid of military service.
6
@HenryParsons
Mr. Parsons, I only hope you are right.
3
So, Mr. Caplan will initially lose his prestigious law firm position, and later be jailed and disbarred upon his likely felony convictions for participating in this criminal enterprise. For what? That his teenage daughter could be accepted at a college where she did not rightfully belong in the first place? What could motivate a person of his assumed intellect and prestigious position to act in such an audaciously reckless, illegal manner? His large International law firm probably has its own white collar criminal law section whose clients and cases he knew something about. Apparently, he never imagined that he would have to retain for his own serious legal problems an attorney from one of those very practices. What an unbelievable lapse of judgment.
36
@John Grillo perhaps it’s how he got into university himself. And some of his peers. Going on forever and until now nobody ever caught. That’s about the only thing explaining this level of arrogance, the surety of getting away with it.
5
@John Grillo,
"What could motivate a person of his assumed intellect and prestigious position to act in such an audaciously reckless, illegal manner?"
That's easy. The very rich don't believe the law applies to them -- ever.
10
@John Grillo, I agree with your opinion with one exception. Caplan didn't have a lapse in judgement; he was exercising a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement.
5
Having just completed the whole admissions process for my oldest child, I have been voraciously digesting this story. Suddenly, a lot of things are making sense about our experience. I feel angry, disappointed, and kind of like sharpening my pitchfork...
55
These people think that they are better than anybody else just because they have money or hold an executive position somewhere, their disregard for the process is a complete disrespect to our society.
This is a good opportunity to send a message.
14
If the allegations against ETS are true and the key figures convicted, I hope they receive maximum sentences -- and, as others have opined, that the entire ETS system is completely revamped or abandoned.
The pattern is so clear: Manafort, a serial and jaded criminal, gets only seven years, while POC spend decades in jail for minor crimes, often the result of poverty and abuse; others are judged instantaneously (recently, for jaywalking) with police bullets and death.
Meanwhile, rich folks work the system. In this case, they illegally pay for college admissions and bribe the ETS, while those with more deserving kids -- ones who burn the midnight oil studying while their parents are out working double shifts -- have to play by the (stated) rules.
If there were ever a moment when our dual system of justice and access is apparent, this is it -- and right there on the front pages of the NYT, on a single day.
25
The real scandal here is that universities with endowments of $25Bn (Stanford), $30Bn (Yale) and $40Bn (Harvard) still want their palms greased. Greed has no limits.
55
@Todd Hudson
Meanwhile, the gap between the ultra rich and poor just keeps getting wider and wider.
3
The fact that this story is garnering so much attention (not just another victim of the 24 hour news cycle) is those of us not in the 1% understand how damaging this kind of cheating is.
It has hit a nerve with us. Many of us are middle class (or desperately trying to remain in the middle class). We know that our children will struggle to have even the same standard of living we have, and more likely will fall behind.
Many poor and middle class families (of any ethnic background) whose children worked hard and did extremely well, are being shut out at these top schools, because of the "affirmative action" of white wealth. These families aren't in it to brag about their kids. Rather, they see these opportunities as a way up for their young family members. A way to actually live the American dream -- which is beyond reach for most young people now.
And this is why these acts of fraud by families - who were already born on third base with platinum spoons in their mouths - are so pernicious. These families don't have the slightest concern about breaking the law, and know they'll get a slap on the hand, at worst. But their actions contribute to the already growing class divide in this country.
These cheaters are not only taking the few admissions spots left for many very worthy kids of families with limited means, but are also taking away their chance to improve their lives - to do better than their parents did. That's what our country was supposed to be about. Not anymore.
282
@Nicholas Rush
A wonderfully cogent comment.
My wife & I both graduated from a first-class state university.
That it was possible to cheat or pay (not they we or our families could have afforded it) into an elite, ivy place never occurred to us.
We worked hard, garnered a few, extra degrees between us and productively contributed until we retired in the full knowledge that we prospered (not monetarily) thanks to a bit of luck and innate talent.
We are a vanishing class and the country is worse for it.
29
I agree with most of your comment, Nicholas Rush, but disagree with the phrase “ ‘affirmative action’ for white wealth.” In my experience affirmative action is a credible policy for attempting to provide restitution to the descendants of people from whom the US government stole labor/property and unjustly oppressed or individuals who continue to suffer based on ethnicity or gender as a result of those government actions. I would say “unfairly favoring white wealth.”
8
@Nicholas Rush Thank you, well said
4
It's hard to know where to begin with this story: the hubris of the parents, the sense of entitlements these parents have demonstrated, or the need to flaunt their children as yet another aspect of their "success". Is it any wonder the children of these parents believe they deserve or belong as students in these universities? I think all of these students whos are currently attending these colleges should be expelled WITHOUTH EXCEPTION and all those who have graduated should have their degrees rescinded. I find it very hard to believe the applicants did not know what their parents were doing. Apparently everyone involved needs some lessons in morality. Just another example of excessive wealth breeding moral decay.
29
My former husband and myself were a high income couple with a high achieving high school student. She was given every advantage in the process to gain admission to a top school. That included professional counseling to learn how to build a "resume" in her high school years, recommendations for which courses to take, which activities to participate in to demonstrate leadership skills and so on. She took the Kaplan SAT prep course, took the SAT twice to bolster her score, toured several college campuses and received professional advice on how best to approach the application essay. The end result was her acceptance at one Ivy, wait listed at two others and accepted at the University of Michigan and two other eastern schools. She graduated with honors from the school of her choice. We did everything to enhance her chances and today she has a great career. But we need to make the system fairer for those who do not have the advantages family money can provide. And cheating should be severely punished.
18
@maya Hopwfully your successful daughter can take the lead to ensure incidents like these become increasingly rare.
2
Universities should consider applicants based on their talents and desired major. For instance, why not have specialized programs just for athletes? Another for musicians, artists, etc.
Unless you're going to be an engineer, physicist or go into medicine or the sciences, why does everyone have to be proficient in calculus and chemistry?
We don't test STEM majors for their ability to play classical music or expect them to be exceptional athletes.
Colleges and universities should help nurture students' individual talents and interests. Everyone has a talent that's worth developing.
4
It's impossible to have any sympathy at all for anyone involved.
45
If one of the minors was in fact misled by her/his parent(s) and by a healthcare professional to believe her/his poor grades or previously sub-par test scores were the result of an undiagnosed and thus not reasonably accommodated disability; and therefore had no reason to question why s/he later was able to take the SAT or ACT with more time, I have sympathy for that kid. Not just for the mortification of all of the current and future infamy, but also because of what was revealed to that kid about her/his own parent's capacity and will to deception, and the damage done to the child-parent bind and trust.
On some level I also pity the kids who were raised in a family with such bad values and by parents with such poor judgement and selfishness that the kids themselves internalized and enacted those disturbing qualities themselves.
Great legacy, folks.
1
My father worked as a researcher in a top ivy league university (which I will not name) back in the '70s, and as a small child I remember the hippy, colorful atmosphere whenever my parents took me on campus. From what my parents told me, it was a great place of education but most of all social equality, where the best scientists emerged because of their merits, not because of their family money.
In the past few years my father (now retired) has returned to this university several times to attend conferences or hold lectures. His most recent comment was on how he noticed that the student body had radically changed: most of the kids seemed to be very well groomed and gave the appearance of extreme wealth - judging from their clothes, their cars, their demeanor and their conversation topics. My father remarked that he had the impression that the "working class" students had almost disappeared, and the only consistent group of hard-working, non-elite students that he could recognize was formed by the many Asians on campus.
Reading about the rigged admissions scandal, I now realize that my father's impressions might have been right on the money.
85
@Andy
Things change....... Not always for the better.
You can tell me which school it was. I won't reveal it.
Might it be Brown or Cornell, maybe Dartmouth ? It's D isn't it.
1
Clearly some greater oversight is needed for disability accommodations, since the events described in the news make it sound fairly easy to game the system. Hopefully the psychologist employed by Mr. Singer will have his or her license reviewed by state authorities.
24
...And as a parent of a struggling student with actual and significant special needs, this is so frustrating. We’ve worked and fought so hard for every accommodation.
17
Reviewed? How about revoked!
Until everyone who exploits such situations for personal financial gain at the expense of all those who play by the rules we won’t stop this flood of unethical behavior they were just as complicit as the doctors running pain clinics who were giving out opioid scripts like candy to line their pockets.
8
@teacher Clearly, money could not buy a certain person the intelligence to distinguish the difference between co-occurrence and causation, not to consider the possibility of a self-selected or otherwise biased/weighted sample.
One would think that an elite private school in NYC would hire and retain teachers who don't deal in stereotypes (e.g., that many people with so-called hidden disabilities are faking it), who don't misrepresent their own level and area of expertise, who clearly lack or fail to employ basic critical thinking skills, and who seem to resent and distrust at least 1/3 of their students and the parents who pay their tuition.
1
Is bribing coaches considered so different from, say: making a large donation to a school in exchange for admission for one’s child?
16
@Nancy
While I am not advocating buying a college a new building in order for the Admin to consider your children into their university, there seems to be a substantial difference to me to have a building built that would benefit lots of students vs lying, changing scores, photoshopping images of your child to create a persona that does not exist. On top of which these phonies took positions that were normally only available to a handful of studentsd
6
Yes, it is quite different:
1) The bribe $$ benefits only the individual coach in his/her private capacity and the family making the bribe (and any middleman who takes a personal cut). Whereas a donation to the school itself benefits the wider university community as a whole (or a substantial
portion of the community, which frees up money that can be spent on the rest of the community). The donation also guarantees nothing -- I know numbers of legacy donors whose kids didn't make the cut.
2) The bribe also involves fraud. It is an inducement to commit one or more fraudulent acts, against one or more parties and, in this case, to benefit only one person or one family. Thus, the bribe money actually harms the wider university community. The donations made directly to the university don't involve fraud -- the parent donor and their kid tell the truth about the kid's test scores, accomplishments, grades, and other talents and abilities. No one is falsifying medical or psychological records, no one is feigning disability or extraordinary ability, no one is tampering with test results or swearing false oaths or messing up the metrics or reliability or reputation of nation-wide standardized tests so that, effectively, they are no longer standardized, no one is creating a fraudulent charitable foundation, no person is profiting from the desperation of another, and no one is trying to hide the donation from the US and state governments.
5
One is embarrassing in its perpetual practice while the other is a crime. So we can hate both as they advantage the few who possess the wealth to do this but at least at this point only bribery and deceit will bring the Feds
5
Did not Trumps father pay for him to get in college and payed to assure he got a degree? Because he was a very smart genius.
38
I hope those accepted into these universities under false pretences are expelled immediately, the college id removed, and forced to move out of the dorm before the sun sets today. This may send a strong message to parents not to EVER attempt anything like this.
55
@Eli
What about the hundreds who already graduated?
3
What good is it to be rich if you can't buy influence or make the occasional bribe? It sounds like you expect the wealthy and powerful to play by the same rules as everyone else. Fairness is for poor people.
22
No one is above the law. Nixon found that one out the hard way.
1
This has been going on for decades. Why is everyone aghast? It spans consultants and schools both nationally and internationally getting students in through special access and coaching and badgering. Does everyone actually think those people in high places are preternatuarally smarter? Not at all. Just in a class with money and access.
20
@VH
I know. This is just the catalyst that made us face this situation. I think it's good that so many people are now paying attention and talking about this.
2
The real scandal is the preference given legally to legacies, the children of wealthy donors, and athletes--many of whom don't bother to graduate. How is cheating on the SAT any worse than admitting a student in one of the above categories with low SATs? How is giving preference to a fake athlete any worse than giving preference to a real one?
13
@Cactus Oh come on. Schools benefit from strong athletic programs, and at most places your "legacy" status doesn't mean squat unless your parents ALSO have given piles of money to the school.
The whole process is unctuous but when all's said and done that money funds financial aid. So does the money from sports.
2
@Cactus Does athletic talent rate lower than artistic talent? I don't think so. Schools seek a diverse population including students with talents and skills across the spectrum. Student athletes and legacies must still meet a series of requirements for consideration at the most competitive schools, although yes, they will sometimes be on the lower range of admission parameters. And, of course, there are economic considerations for admitting such students including fund-raising and other knock-on benefits that accrue to the entire school. Legacy admits are small, and might typically only benefit a student who falls on the fence in terms of qualifications. Legacies do not get free passes.
3
That’s the real scandal? Seriously? You don’t think cheating, lying, falsifying documents, bribing officials, and getting a tax break for the effort, is the real scandal? My goodness.
4
Students who applied and were rejected are due a refund of their application fees plus an apology.
35
@Michael
Why? Would these colleges have accepted everyone if they had not been deceived by these fraudsters?
This redefines "helicopter parenting". Will these kids parents buy them jobs, too? These parents have been sabotaging their children's ability to succeed since birth.
These kids are in for a huge awakening when they enter the workforce and don't get gold stars for showing up and prizes for just making an effort.
13
@BG
It sounds like their parents have enough money to finance their lives in perpetuity. I am not hopeful about any kind of awakening.
7
This also happens on more subtle levels all the time (application padding). I have a friend with a kid in high school...grew up speaking English in an English-speaking household. But she got herself into a Spanish immersion program in grade school. Now she is claiming on her college apps that she is an "English Language Learner". When we pointed out the questionable ethics of this to the parents, we just got a shrug..."it's so competitive", "everyone else does stuff like this", "you GOTTA do it...for your kid". Classic justification stuff.
21
Playing Dirty has always been part of perpetuating the Winning Class. It is now conventional wisdom that the game Is fixed. And many have come to believe that you need a fixer if you want to win.
A big reason for Trump's appeal as Champion of the White Left Behind is that he fights dirty. His lifelong dishonesty is seen as a job qualification for the Presidency.
To the extent that belief in the con-man Trump has increased "confidence", the dream continues. Until people wake up to find themselves under a mountain of debt with their pockets picked.
15
@Bernard Tuchman The faith in Trumpian ethics is about to get a rude awakening. Mr. Trump could even spend the rest of his life in prison, after he is turned out of the presidency.
Look around , corruption has always been the name of the game
3
This is fake new for the masses. It's only an issue for the education snob. A school doesn't make a student... a student makes a student. The desire to lean is more important than the need to be self-important.
1
@marrtyy You don't go to these schools with education as your primary goal. You go for status and to make connections with your fellow students that will serve you later in your career.
23
@marrtyy Please don't use the term "fake news." The "news" here is entirely true and doesn't seem you are disputing that. Rather, you assert that where you go to school doesn't matter. Perhaps true, and totally agree that it isn't the school you go to but how you use your time there that matters. Calling this Fake News, however, perpetuates the perspective out there that anything you don't agree with must be a lie. no one is lying here so let's don't call it that.
2
I went to High School in Southern California during the mid '70s. Even at the time, USC was known as University of Spoiled Children.
64
Yep. It's not a school known for academics.
3
And the fun does not stop once the larval elite make into Elite U.
Go to class? Google "Buy class notes."
Write a paper? "Buy a term paper"
Take the final? "Buy college tests" plus Greek organizations have been collecting past tests for decades
31
@Rick
All for a paltry $240,000 for 4 years.
Affrimative action opponents bellow that it has destroyed the ideal of Higher Education as a meritocracy -- based solely on strict adherence to qualifications measured primarily by grades and test scores. Enrolling nonwhites under a broadened concept of "admissibility" is so heretical as to be unconstitutional. But, but athlete admissions, legacies, geography -- and now admissions boosted by lying, big bucks and bribery -- you know, affirmative action for white people -- historical, time-honored, sacrosanct -- that's all ok.
49
@Riley Temple Admissions are not meritocratic, they are holistic - everything goes.
2
Why the other actress, Felicity Huffman, is not mentioned here?
3
Once again, this shows just how corrupt everything is in our "economic system", that money is everything, and everything can be bought for a price, off the record of course that sets up your kid for life.
That is, if you're rich, have the right contacts, and are dishonest enough to pay off the right people. And most of the rest of us should be prepared for mediocrity with few exceptions!
I wonder how many of the rest of us who tried our hardest to compete and honestly proceed with life. This is inequality raising its ugly head again, which show that anything goes if you're wealthy! That is why the majority of us want and are demanding change.
Further its ironic that the GOP and Trump call the rest of us socialists. Actually, these individuals are the socialists, while the rest of us subsidize them, and pay for their unethical and illegal exemptions with our taxes. They are the only ones that are rich enough to have these allegedly inappropriate and now these, illegal exemptions.
In summation, I hope that there is some way that those who were complicit can somehow sanctioned for their actions and thefts.
11
@Quandry, And the rich people tell us "money can't buy happiness", right? If you're rich, it most certainly can buy happiness. Imagine how happy they all would have been with their kids safely in ivy league schools.
Unless you get caught, then I guess they're fairly unhappy.
2
@Quandry
Yes, and as Donald Trump said to his rich Mar-a-lago friends, the Republican Tax Cut just made them a whole lot richer!
1
This is yet one more example of how the rich and connected believe they are better than the 99% and are above the law. America is a class based society, every bit as in England or France. Money and connections are king.
29
@Mitch
90% of America wants the ultra rich taxed at a much higher rate but Mitch MConnell won't allow that...he and his rich buddies in Congress would then have to pay.
1
@Mitch
Maybe this will be the spark for an "off with their heads" movement in America. Entitled, wealthy cheats are poisoning this country. Yes, there is such a thing as having too much money.
1
Remember the mantra, especially here in the upland South, that local boards of education know best how to handle education in their respective states? This mess is the natural growth of such beliefs and don’t tread on me attitudes; stemming also from cloistered children funnily needing safe spaces away from riff-raff like me. This ‘don’t mean nuthin’, as I express a war zone vernacular. So much attention is being spent on the present mess, you can just try to imagine the magnitude of favors and frauds being pushed through these smarmy colleges with money and no intellect or ‘sensus communis’. It’s not only the rich, moreover. On the local government and education level, the frauds are spectacular and nothing can be done, that is, unless you just want to have your house burned down.
We welcome yet another teachable moment to remind America what hypocrites liberals, and especially hollywood liberals, are. And the comments from their spawn? Already hypocrites as teenagers. The campaign ads write themselves. But how often, to whom and under what issue heading? That will be our surprise.
6
Let's remember that Liberals are good aggressive capitalists too... they're just playing the game... be quiet. also I'm sure there were a fair number of right-wingers in the group as well. I don't recall anybody asking what their political persuasion was as long as they had the money.
2
@Beatrice What makes you think that these people are liberals? What makes them so? I understand that they are the opposite.
@Beatrice There's no indication in this article that these crimes were committed exclusively by members at either end of the political spectrum. But I appreciate you trying to create political division through your hateful comment.
3
Sorry. I'm a non-native and don't understand on what grounds people get arrested for criminal acts in this case. As far as I can figure out all universities involved are private institutes. The SAT and ACT providers are private companies. The bribing parents and the admission officers can just claim that they got a monetary present and admitted the students because they liked their face. Rick Singer can flat out claim that he helped oiling the gears. The case of the bribed admission officers is between them and their institutes, they will just get fired if they are still there. What kind of case can be made against the parents?
Btw, in a way this is just a handful of cases of moral dis-functionality. Imho the Legacy and 'Donation' cases are a way bigger issue, both in numbers and morality.
The college entrance forms are legal documents. If you passed money to submit or exploit the forms, you commit fraud. The FBI does not go after everyone that lies on a college entrance form or test. It does go after people that make money off it across state lines and that use the banking system to conceal the transactions. Another big piece was the corporation was listed as a charity allowing the parents to take tax full deductions for contributions. The US tax code does not have any legal way to deduct education expenses except via very nominal education credits, a few thousand dollars.
If these parents had given money to the school directly, everything would have been legal. Unfortunately for them, the market price for donors getting attention from a school is much higher than the amounts these people paid. They wanted a discount.
5
@GvN
Public/private is irrelevant; it's still wire/mail fraud. And Singer already pleaded guilty.
@GvN Nearly all major universities, public and private, get some level of Federal education dollars and are required to conform to certain standards of behavior. This scandal is a corruption of this system. It is not merely a matter of 'private' business.
1
What’s the point of going to a brand name college to be there with a bunch of other nameless but hardworking blue collar kids? All these, “elite,” schools need famous and wealthy kids to keep up appearances. There is no special math at Harvard. Yale with no rich kids isn’t Yale.
6
American education has been completely discredited by these acts of cowardice! It's disgraceful!
1
Oh please! People involved with post secondary education have done a lot worse than this episode. They committed crimes, but let’s get a grip here.
1
Cheating isn't characteristic on only the elite. Folks at all points of socio-economic spectrum cheat. Crime, by definition, is a form of cheating.
What makes this so alluring for the mass media is that this example of cheating centers on wealthy people.
Here, the progressive mantra is wealthy = evil. Folks here love to hate wealthy folks, regardless of how they earned their living.
When an illegal or other criminal cheats someone of their life (ie: murder) where is the outrage?
There isn't any. One crime of an elite in Chicago would VASTLY over shadow all the rest of Chicago crime, combined.
Think I'm wrong? Then pls explain Jussie's media coverage.
1
What do these parents tell their children? How do they normalize this aberrant behavior? Do the children just accept this as part and parcel of their station if life? And the parents immediately post bond and are out that afternoon while other people rot away in jail because the cash bail system favor those with means. This story is so rotten on so many levels it would take 10,000 words to address all the inequities but surely the "tax destructibility" of the payment made to the artificial non profit fronting this whole scheme is the cherry on the sundae. Taxpayers get to pick up the tab for this kind of behavior. This story really does encapsulate whats wrong with our current income inequality. This speaks right to the heart of it. Playing by the rules gets you nowhere. Lying cheating bribing cutting corners falsifying records all are normalized. Sad and pathetic.
6
@dharbit This is not the same as doing nothing for the money spent, but I understand that the daughter of the Loughlin actress set up a social media business. I believe she was selling ads. It would be interesting to know what the children think about all this.
What university excepted John F Kennedy Junior?
When he was taking his exams he had difficulty with them. I told him I could help with his reading problem. He never answered
Later when he was flying his airplane and it was cloudy he thought he was diving up into the air when actually he was diving straight down and apparently got killed. Later I learned he was learning disabled.
Actually John was left-handed. He was fored to to be right handed. The above conditions can be caused by people who are learning disabled.
5
Some rich kids get help from their parents bribing doctors to score higher on SATs, some rich kids get help from their parents bribing doctors to avoid serving in the military during time of war.
13
@Cowboy Marine
Good point! How is any of this any different from Trump's "bone-spurs"?
3
What those who faked a disability did is, to many people with disabilities, the equivalent of wearing blackface. And the healthcare providers who made fraudulent diagnoses are assistants who paint it on.
Except in some ways it is worse: at least those wearing blackface aren't taking advantage of important and hard-won civil rights laws or affirmative action!
9
Anti-academic Trump supporters must be belly laughing and nodding their heads in assurance right now.
2
True, one might be a lot safer outside of the math and verbal game.
Arrogant Gordon Caplan , if this are his own ethics as with his family what do you expect him as a lawyer. Total unethical guy. He must be disbar
6
The colleges are unindicted co-conspirators.
Even the vaunted Ivies are basically for profit (for the benefit of their highly compensated professors and administrators and mafia style alumni networks.)
Mr Salovey, president of Yale is particularly disingenious and heinous.
Casablanca style: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]. Croupier: “Your winnings, sir.” Captain Renault: “Oh, thank you very much.”
2
@JMAN
I don’t quite see how the universities benefit from this scam. They wind up with no money, since the bribes aren’t going to them but at most to a few of their employees. They also wind up with unqualified students and wasted athletic scholarships.
2
Gordon, say good-bye to your life.
4
Breaking news: Rich chest to game system already rigged in their favor!!!
I am shocked! Shocked!
3
Stupid people doing stupid things and they should be punished, but is this something the FBI should be involved with?
@Scott
My understanding is that the FBI is involved because the fake donations (bribes) were tax-exempt because they were supposed to be donations to non-profit orgs. So not only were these people paying to cheat, they were getting a tax break on their bribes. Someone please correct me if this is incorrect.
8
The FBI does not care if you cheat as long as you do not use banking or tax systems to support your cheating. The FBI agent got a little overblown on protecting integrity. You can cheat all you want. Just do not spend money doing it.
1
@Scott
Bribing occurred across state lines and involved cheating (fraud) by national testing center employees.
Big league crimes.
1
USC admitted the Giannulli girls as crew recruits.Then USC should be required to have them crew a scull, Freshman 8s or Big 8s. Another NCAA recruiting scandal.
11
It is not a recruiting scandal if they do not spend the scholarship or compete with the team.
@Michael Blazin
Sure it's a scandal - these two took spots allocated for real scholar-athletes.
2
@NCCHAN, I like that idea.
How is it that Educational Testing Services missed all the red flags in this case? They went after an African American girl in Florida because they assumed that her improvement in scores after a retake was cheating. Yet these hundreds of rich white kids didn’t raise suspicion when their SAT scores differed from their PSAT scores. How about when hundreds of rich kids get designated as learning disabled. Does that raise a red flag? Nope, not to ETS. Another person literally changed their answers and still, crickets.
I hope this is the death knell for ETS and their corrupt monopoly on the college entrance system. Not only corrupt, but financially supported at gunpoint by every parent whose child applies to college.
335
@Joanne, it's not the ETS that is at fault. It's the parents and the other crooks involved in this scheme. And this is the tip of the iceberg, and a big iceberg it is.
3
@Harvey Green
The ETS has cultivated the field in which this scandal grew. The involvement of rich parents and amoral "tutors" and coaches (& who knows who else) followed directly from the idea that you can quantify educational development and that it directly predicts the "success" of the individual tested. It was a good scam while it lasted.
11
ETS only administers the SAT, it is owned and created by The College Board. It is they would are responsible for reviewing accommodation requests.
2
This is indicator #2,547 about how unfettered capitalism has run into every corner of our society so that most people struggle to afford childcare, elderly care, and higher education. And those that can afford these things increasingly operate according to a different set of rules for the wealthy.
25
@Flaco actually, it was much worse in the past at elite schools. That doesn’t make this ok, but it’s important to recognize that schools used to only accept people of the highest class and status, who were white and Christian, at a much higher rate in the past than now.
1
We live in a bedroom community outside NYC where many "Masters of the Universe" raise their children. The only "diversity" comes from household help, estate management services, etc. I'm not a native of this area, so many of the quirks of this bubble became obvious immediately. Regarding some reader's comments:
~Rich parents view their offspring as an extension of themselves. In this area, most parents have themselves gone to elite schools. It's important to their self- image to say their kid got into an Ivy or top tier college. That transmits that they themselves are smart and have smart children; and that they have successfully raised them. Ivy's are NOT about the education; school forms a lifelong network of important connections.
~Rich kids (and those of the famous), have been treated like fine china since birth. They are told by their families and those that surround them that they are special, that they are more important than the average person, and that Mother and Daddy will take care of every challenge in their lives. They don't need to "play by the rules", bc "we have money". The level of snobbery and entitlement you see in kids as young as 8 is maddening. My guess is the schemes their parents used to get them into a top school was both unsurprising to them and considered par for the course. No need feeling sorry for them; their parents have handled every aspect of their lives from conception. This is how it works.
A peek behind the curtain is needed now and then.
54
@Mildred Pierce
Great comment. But I think instead of an occasional peek behind the curtain. society would be better served if it was torn down.
16
I guess I don’t see a value in connections. Had I been rich I wouldn’t have made any regardless. I went to class and studied and graduated. Connections are a distraction and if I need help at home now I call a contractor. What are connections for anyway?
@Mildred Pierce And in most cases the parents even micromanaged the conception through birth control.
I'm a high school teacher, and these stories make me so sad and angry for the kids I teach who are fighting to be their best selves, hoping against hope that they have what it takes to earn their way into college. That they are on such an uneven playing field is disheartening, to say the least.
But as a teacher, I feel sorry most of all for the children whose parents did not raise them to believe that they could create a great life with the talents and efforts that they possessed, so they needed to have the way smoothed for them. I feel sorry for these college students who went along with mom and dad because mom and dad said that's how it was done, and now the children suffer the shame and fallout from the parents' parenting. They were raised to believe that it was wealth and entitlement that would pave their ways, and their parents didn't show them another way, and now they must learn. It will be a difficult lesson to digest; I suspect some will never recover. In an effort to protect their children, these parents will have harmed those children in ways they cannot possibly imagine. Some will enter the workforce as entitled brats; others will buckle from this disgrace. Hopefully some will see the light, and start to chose their own paths, and find the joy of doing the right thing, earning their way instead of buying it.
31
A relative hired a professional writer to write her son’s admission essay for college. I remember thinking how hideous that was. It sends her son two contradictory messages. One, that’s he’s special and entitled. Two, that he’s incapable of getting into college on his own. Oh, yeah - and Three, that his mother is ok with cheating.
The narcissism of these parents is over-the-top. Somehow, the fact that they can brag to others about their child’s school overrides their sense of fairness and ethical behavior. They see their children as extensions of themselves. “Look how great my kid is; she got into Yale.” In other words, I gave birth to this perfect human specimen; she/he is of ME. I feel sorry that the children are of them, frankly. They’re going to be overindulged, entitled and narcissistic themselves, through no fault of their own.
37
@Kathryn
The ills you cite are attributable to the fact that from the very outset, these selfish parents are accustomed to acting like gods.
From this it follows that it is impossible for them to regard their children as anything like gratuitous gifts from the real God.
Instead, they view their own offspring as commodities that they have created for themselves, on their own terms, for their own satisfaction, and according to a contraceptively-influenced (indeed, dominated) schedule that suits them.
Little wonder that we have the plague of helicopter parents, micromanaging every aspect of their children's lives, even as they did with the timing of their children's conception.
3
@Kathryn
Professional admissions officials are highly skilled in recognizing essays that are not written by high school applicants.
I have to believe that such applications are then relegated to a "CHEATED ON ESSAY" pile.
2
Too many people are obsessed with attending ivy leagues. I attended a small non-ivy league college that was more fitting for me than any Ivy League would have been.
A friend who attended Harvard told me that on the first day, there was an orientation during which the freshmen were told they were the cream of the crop, the best of the best, on and on. Turns out that most of his teachers that year were TAs with little experience teaching.
This warped sense of the importance of ivy leagues wrecks peoples’ judgment and leads to desperate and sometimes illegal efforts to get in.
A more balanced and sane view that takes into account which colleges work best for which people would help erode the misguided efforts to attend
Harvard.
28
@Andrea P. Yes, I am so old women weren't allowed into the Ivy League schools when I went, but I did go to a prestigious all womens school (on a nearly full scholarshp earned through good grades and high SAT scores, for which my preparation was limited to a paperback test prep book). However, I could have gone to the honors college of my state univ. on a full scholarship and sometimes wonder if that,or maybe a small co-ed liberal arts school,might not have been, if not better, at least as good in preparing me for life.
By the way, the full scholarship I was offered by my state uni would have covered tuition, room and board, which in 1965. my freshman year, totaled about $1,000. Even if I hadn't been offered a scholarship, I could have worked my way through school at rates like that (which my brother did). It's a pity taxpayers are no longer willing to pay the taxes that could continue to make a solid public education affordable to all.
13
@Andrea P.
The only Ivy League school I’ve seen mentioned in this mess is Yale.
2
“What happened is, all the wealthy families that figured out that if I get my kid tested and they get extended time, they can do better on the test.”
Yep, that approach is rife, even starting in middle school in the Bay Area's "elite" independent schools. When my child took the SSAT (not even SAT) for high school, she said more than half her classmates got extra time to take the test. Absolutely many of the children required the accommodations bc of a learning disability, but more than 50%? Seems high.
26
@Been there, saw that I am not familiar with the extra testing rules as they didn't exist in my time. I can only hope that the official reporting of scores is accompanied by the exact amount of extra time the "disabled" student required.
4
@Been there, saw that
All students should get the amount of time they need to finish the tests.
2
The purpose of the program is get the disabled student into the mainstream. Flagging her test scores would defeat the purpose. These tests handle millions of children every year. Don’t destroy a program for 50 problems over 7 years.
1
I think these elite schools are Tinder for the elite's kids, assuring they will meet "people like us."
4
@Juliana Sadock Savino And "people like us" are going to hire "people like us."
1
Are the students admitted via the " side door " expelled ? If they are graduated, is their graduation certificate revoked ?
6
Since these parents are affluent people, the final verdict for their action should be to have them pay the tuition fees for several qualifying students to attend these famous colleges and universities.
8
Why should kids with learning disabilities get extra time? If a kid has a middling IQ he or she doesn’t get accommodations—but a low IQ is as unfair or unjust a disadvantage as dyslexia is. Either enforce testing and admissions standards or get rid of them, and give everyone of every level of ability and background an equal shot at getting into Stanford through random selection.
And yes, all these cheating kids must have known what their parents were up to, or are otherwise unproven and/or unqualified and should be expelled. They won’t though, because at the end of the day, money takes care of everything.
4
@Nicky
Well, I agree there are problems in how the boundaries are drawn around needs and who gets what, but I don't think you understand. My kid, for example, also has motor skill deficits. Just coloring in the bubbles takes her extra time. Should she be penalized for that?
And, in any case, I wonder what percentage of us parents who have kids with actual special needs are really angling for Stanford. Never fear, my own disabled kid is not out to steal your able kid's spot.
Here's a test: your kid probably really deserves accommodations when she desperately doesn't want them and will do everything in her power not to have to make use of them, and she probably will only use them as a last resort because it is the only way to make the broader world understand what she is capable of accomplishing.
A kid like that, if well parented, will usually have much more on her plate to worry about than trying to get into Stanford.
4
An excellent argument for a wealth tax.
14
What these parents and bribe collectors did was awful and immoral but it is unclear to me what law was broken. I'm no lawyer but I don't get it. Cheating is essentially lying. It is illegal to lie to an FBI agent because you are under oath. It is also illegal to lie to a bank when pursuing a loan because that is bank fraud. But cheating on a test or bribing someone to facilitate cheating doesn't strike me as technically illegal. Am I missing something here?
@Paul
You sign your name on the test. Implicit in that signature is that you are the one who has taken the test, under fair and honest circumstances. When a college or university admits you, in part based on that test, that's fraud. And considering the cost of college education these days, that acceptance is worth a heap of money, which you've illegally obtained.
Merely getting the test taken under false pretenses, maybe that's not a crime. It's what you do with those test results. That's how I'd argue it.
3
@Paul They knowingly paid for Singer's services to a fake charity. Some of the parents may have also taken the donation as a tax write-off. That's the crime. Tax violations and wire fraud. Also some kind of conspiracy and coverup charge may also be applicable through the RICO charges. The parents participated in a scheme and defrauded the IRS.
3
It is only fraud worthy of FBI attention if money passes hands, particularly across state lines. The FBI does not care if you lie on your entrance forms unless it is to work for the government.
1
Lori, take your entitled offspring out of school. They don't belong there and aren't interested in anything but "gamedays and partying." Make room for real students.
USC: If Loughlin doesn't remove her fraudulently admitted children from your school, the "university" must act to remove them immediately. They have no business as posers inhabiting your dorm rooms and using them a vehicle for their profit.
In the 1940s, my grandfather was the university glassblower at USC, my mother graduated Phi Beta Kappa from USC, and my father received a masters in education at USC. I got my college degree from the superior University of California system with no desire to be a legacy.
The emphasis on sports over academics at USC has led to declining standards and an environment where fraud can flourish.
26
@James
“The university glass blower”? I’m not dissing your grandfather, but I’ve been part of a good many university communities and none of them had glass blower, except maybe in the art department.
1
All of the students who benefited from their parents' actions should retake the standardized tests as well as reapply to the school without any false disability or sports claims. After all, the students signed the application forms after their own review. They too are complicit. If appropriate, the class spaces should be awarded to deserving students.
And the parents should go to jail!
16
I am a geologist. On a hot day In May of 1990 I was examining a road-cut rock-outcrop in rural eastern Kentucky when I noticed a shirtless young man hiking up the hill towards me. He had an old-fashioned, single-handled clasp-style suitcase slung over his back and was sweating profusely. When he got to me I asked him what he was doing. He said he was a student at Morehead State University and was walking home for the summer break. He had walked 20 miles and had 20 more miles to go. He had no money, no car and no other way to get home. I drove him home to his parents tiny frame house in a typical Appalachian holler. This kid wanted an education! No one paid bribes, or rigged his SAT exams to get him into an elite college.. .. whatever this kid was going to get in life it was going to be on his own merit.
It seem to me that Universities, particularly the wealthy private Universities, might spend a bit more of their enormous endowments determining what a young person has attained based on where they started from, and a bit less on where they're at when they submit their applications.
74
My daughter had difficulty decoding words when she was in elementary school. After some tutoring, she began to read with fewer challenges but was still on the slower end of the spectrum. When she was ready to take the SATs, we probably should have asked for special accommodations but we didn't see the point of trying to raise her scores to get her into a more elite college. If she had applied to the Ivy League school that I attended, she would have been a 4th generation legacy, but I couldn't see the point and felt strongly that a smaller school would be a better fit for her. She was accepted to Bryn Mawr (an excellent college where she bloomed) and ended up graduating magna cum laude with honors. Coincidentally, Bryn Mawr has wisely made standardized test scores optional.
15
Just a few hours before this story broke the Times put on line the story about sky high crime rates in Baltimore. It was a depressing story. I found it very interesting that within minutes of the college admissions story coming out, there were vastly more comments published than will ever be seen on the Baltimore story. Kind of tells you about the concerns of NYT readers. It is not a coincidence that the NYT, Atlantic Monthly and other publications do so many college admissions stories.
BTW, not every legacy admit gets in due to bribes. My three children got into very good colleges (no, not Wake Forest or University of San Diego, I mean really!) and my family did not pay bribes, buy a building or make up phony athletic credentials. Also, I have written about this before, a prestigious undergrad is most useful for getting into a top med school, federal clerkship or top law firm, top 3 consulting firm and the top investment banks. For anything else it is unnecessary. Also, many wealthy people in this country are in construction, auto repairs and sales, restaurants, contracting, etc. The idea that only Ivy and Ivy equivalent graduates can get rich is silly. A lot of rich people in suburbia didn't even go to college, or went to middle of the road schools-like Syracuse.
5
1. I don't believe that the children didn't know. If you got into a college on athletic grounds, you get packages containing your incoming athletic career; or if you got extra time for the ACTs/SATs, unless you're mentally incapable of understanding you're getting extra time apart from other students, you'd know you somehow got extra time, which makes you equally culpable.
2. Why do proctors even have the answers to the questions? This is kind of the big mystery in this fiasco for me. So some of these proctors were filling in/changing the answers for the students. But was it Singer who gave them the answers or did they already have the answers and were bribed to use them?
3. So what are these institutions going to do about people who took advantage of the system and received their degrees?
3. I really wonder if those students who entered by these means ended up doing well in their respective colleges. And if so, was this by their own efforts? Or did mommy and daddy step in again to bribe more people to give them As? Where does it end?
6
@Luke If the solo test was given on a date after the date of the group test, the proctor could have a copy of a stolen exam. Or, the proctor could simply have taken the test him/herself. The articles regarding this story don’t specify when the test was handed in. I personally have a faster reading speed than most high school students. I know that my verbal skills exceed those of a relative who scored 780 on the SAT verbal section last year. (My score was 760 before the ETS dropped the obscure vocabulary words years ago.) If I wanted to be a fake proctor, I could easily guarantee a verbal score above 700. Alas, I could not do the same on the math section, but I know a number of STEM professionals who could.
I'm guessing that their sense of entitlement did not include getting caught.
Where will these poor kids be forced to go to school? A state school??? Perish the thought.
@BG I'm not so certain they could have gotten into a state school. Maybe a community college that lets anyone in, but many state schools, like SUNY, Rutgers, etc. are quite competitive -- probably as competitive as some of the private schools the parents were bribing their kids into -- like BU, USC, Wake Forest, etc.
2
I told my brother today that he better start saving up for his bribe to get his son into college in two years!
Who knew that not only did we need to save for tuition and room and board, we needed bribe money?
Nowhere was that written in the college manuals.
I'm mad about that.
7
Barred from further testing? How about referral for prosecution!
1
Nobody should cheat.
However....
The teachers who were proctoring to make extra money (and then took a bribe) will lose their jobs—and any chance of a teaching career.
The coaches who already make way more money than the teachers will probably lose their jobs...but still be able to work as coaches in some capacity.
And the Uber wealthy? They will pay a fine and go on with their lives...
Seems fair....
2
We appear to live in a world where the truth matters very little anymore. On a trip to visit a top 5 college I was taken by the Admissions person sayings 40% of the students were of color. As I walked around the campus I said maybe 7-10%. The Admissions staff kept saying 40% students of color "as self reported." I guess they know there is a solid 25-30% that are not truthful and just gaming the system? We are in a period where the adults have shown their kids it is ok to lie as long as the ends justifies the means.
261
@James Hayes
They are gaming it. These are people who have no respect for anything, including ethnicity. For example, students whose parents were white minorities in other countries will refer to themselves as members of the majority population in that country. They don't outright lie. They don't have to.
14
@James Hayes I am one-eighth Egyptian but had no family or cultural experiences which fairly could be called middle eastern. My daughter is a 12th grader currently awaiting college acceptance letters. Theoretically she could have self identified herself as middle eastern to boost her chances, but doing so wouldn't have been right given her very American upbringing. No middle eastern culture remains in our family after four generations. Your observations suggest a number of students are self reporting as minorities despite displaying no indications of belonging to those groups. If so, they are cynically gaming the system and the colleges are not attaining the desired diverse cultural and ethnic mix.
21
@James Hayes This is complicated by the way in which colleges define ethnicity, which is usually in very simplistic terms that doesn't reflect changing demographic realities... e.g. young people with mixed ethnicity (and there are growing numbers of people in this category) are strongly incentivized by the college admissions process to identify as an ethnic minority even if 50%/75%/87.5% white. That is why upper-middle class kids with exactly 25% Hispanic or native American ancestry are so overrepresented at Yale when compared to the rest of the country. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the kids are lying; it's more that the system as it currently exists defines diversity in far too simplistic a way, and it creates a loophole that certain parts of the upper middle class are able to benefit from. (Also look at the huge numbers of children of wealthy African and Caribbean immigrants at some of these schools as compared to African-American kids...)
19
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say. The rich can buy privileges, status, and all sorts of advantages for themselves and their children. Who'd have thought it?
Many people have reminded us of the obvious point that the rich and well-connected purchase admissions to renowned colleges for their children in virtually endless ways.
A less remarked aspect: many less advantaged children somehow surmount all obstacles to prepare themselves for the best universities but cannot obtain admission because these institutions admit only by denying admission to many underprivileged kids who could greatly benefit themselves, and society, by securing the education they, and all of us, deserve. The most prestigious universities base their reputation not on the quality of the students or education, but simply by admitting very few of the qualified applications.
At some point we might question why the US has a vast and ever-growing underprivileged class [necessary for the existence of the advantaged]. Or any underclass and poor people at all.
Any class system entrenches unfair advantages for its beneficiaries; that is the sole reason for its existence. Americans are always whining about relatively minor injustices of the class system, but seldom challenge the system itself. The fact that some children are born into families that can afford vast sums to bribe their kids' way into elite institutions is itself the problem.
4
With regard to SAT preparation, that can be freely available. In my day, 45 years ago, recognizing that I needed to bump up my vocabulary, I hit the public libraries, borrowing as many preparation books as I could get my hands on, at no personal cost.
As a result I was able to bump up my verbal SAT score 120 points, when I retook the SAT (not happy with my first effort). I then got into an elite college.
The math on the SAT I believe was standard high school teaching, and so I did not sense I had to do more than do well in my regular high school math classes. I worked every night on my homework.
Thus, at no financial cost, and with determination, one can earn winning SAT scores.
5
@Victor Mark
Getting top scores does not assure you of getting into 'elite' school, all who got in during our times will tell you that it's very different for their kids now a days. AND FYI, there is NO connection to standardized test scores AND future academic outcomes! In fact, most PhD biomedical programs, including 'elite' schools have dropped their requirement!
1
@Victor Mark Perfect SAT scores and a "standard" high school schedule doesn't really get you that far anymore, especially if you're aiming for elite schools. College admission 45 years ago isn't really relevant to the current state of affairs.
3
Elite schools can fill their freshman class with near perfect SAT/ACT scores. Kids with perfect scores are turned away in favor of legacy, sports and the many other tools which colleges use to alter (whiten) the appearance of their freshman class. If perfect SAT scores were the key to college admissions, the ivy league would be filled with Asian kids from public schools.
Please read - College Sports Are Affirmative Action for Rich White Students, The Atlantic OCT 23, 2018
"Standard high school teaching" is entirely dependent on where you go to high school, especially in the era of AP/IB classes.
SAT was revised in 2016 - vocab is no longer the emphasis.
2
I know it's mostly the parents' responsibility for being bad people on this, but aren't 18 and 19 year-old high seniors/college freshmen able to question why they got admission based on sports they didn't play? I'm sure some truthfully didn't know what was going on (modified test scores, etc), but some of these schemes seem pretty blatant.
55
@Oats You are correct - they are old enough to know better! But their parents have taught them that it is ok to lie and cheat. It's really sad, especially when you consider that with all their advantages, these kids would likely have been very successful without cheating to get into their favored school.
7
Bottom line, in most cases, the fakers are academically exposed as they can't keep up with the true students and drop out or struggle to keep up and move on to another college (maybe even a state school,God forbid)! Then they moved on to fake jobs their parents are able to "obtain" for them.Sad life for these fakers and the parents who think they are doing the right thing.
The real shame is the student who really is qualified is rejected for being hard working and honest.
12
@But as Laughlin's daughter has stated, she doesn't much care about school. She's there to develop her influencing and branding. Her mother probably taught her this ethos, through no fault of her own (well maybe some). Lori was hired as a young actress, certainly not for talent, but because some rich executive thought she was hot. She married a guy in the superficiality industry, i.e., fashion, where the only things that matters is the appearance of things, not the foundation. And now she's raised a daughter who seems exactly like her, superficial, below average in things besides looks, and probably not someone who you could trust for true friendship if you weren't as pretty as she is. They are a symptom of America as much as a problem.
8
@Larry I went to law school with a bunch of these fakers, also called "legacy's" and they became corporate general counsel and federal district court judges, so they don't do too bad.
2
Some of the schools involved are state schools. So, in a sense, some of these families and their coconspirators also defrauded, or attempted to defraud, a state government.
4
Colleges post the names of the students who made the dean's list. A similar list can be posted for those students who got in by cheating the admission process aided and abetted by their parents. Let the students choose to leave the college out of shame or fight it out and get good grades and make the Dean's list as well.
5
It is not that tough to make the Dean’s List at most colleges.
Most entering college students are 18 years old. They're legally adults. Those involved in this scandal must have known that the workarounds being done on their behalf were illegal. Shouldn't they be under investigation and held responsible as well as their parents and the others?
16
If it can be shown that they (young adults) knew or should have known of the fraud.
Knowledge that one's application materials falsely indicate that one plays, let alone excels at, a sport one has never or rarely participated cannot credibly be denied.
Knowledge that one's SAT score was doctored at some point after you had completed exam and relinquished control of your answers is more credibly denied, as is knowledge that the results of psychological or medical testing were falsified -- if it was all proven to have been done behind your back.
My guess is that these particular parents will do whatever it takes, including again lying and influencing others to do the same, in order to exonerate their children; after all, they've already done something very similar. The feds might not be pursuing the young adults in order to avoid a PR fiasco or triggering a panic of some sort. They might also have reason to believe that the young people who had knowledge of the crimes were threatened or otherwise intimidated by their parent or other conspirators into staying silent.
Anyone choosing to break the law - best not to partner with someone named "Singer" who will sing out the names of his fellow criminals as soon as he is caught. And make no mistake, these parents were not dragged into this - they chose to partner with Mr. Singer in these crimes, and they are just as guilty as he is.
9
@common sense advocate
Well put! He's the mastermind and tax cheat, yet he's the one getting a better deal by selling out his clients.
1
Singer is a common last name among Jewish Americans. I don't know if William "Rick" Singer is in fact Jewish, but I have been to many places in this great country of ours and have yet to meet someone named Singer who did not have Jewish heritage.
Accordingly, whether you meant it so or not, your comment, and the way you carefully crafted it, could understandably come across to many as thinly-veiled anti-semitism; particularly since you (probably wrongly) place all of the blame on one nefarious trickster.
@Anon - criminals who sing and rat out fellow criminals comes from a Mafia reference, which had nothing to do with anyone's religion side there are mafias of many religions and cultures. Also, if you read my comment - I laid the blame on all perpetrators - calling them partners in crime. I assume these partners in crime come from different religions and no religions.
2
When I took the SATs in 2007 I was granted extra time, only because I was already in a special needs program. Undoubtedly I knew I needed it because of my disabilities and I believe I managed a higher score because of it. It does a gross injustice to those high school kids like me who need the extra help just to be remotely even with our "normal" peers. Faking a disability shows despicable moral character.
56
I join with other parents of "real" special needs learners in feeling particular outrage at the practice of special needs "passing." Another reader used the word "cruel," and that doesn't even begin to capture the utter and complete contempt I have for these parents. Paying someone to "coach" your child to pass as a disabled learner? What kind of sick person does that? What kind of sick person talks him or herself into thinking that such a practice can ever, ever be excused?
David Mamet, by the way, I'm including you here as well for your insultingly misguided defense of your entitled friends.
Here's a real special needs learner for you: my daughter, who has neurocognitive disorder, two different types of communication disorder, and ADD, went with me yesterday to walk our neighbor's dog. Her disabilities are such that she will need some form of lifelong support. But you know what she wanted to talk about? A new movie she had heard about that featured young lovers who have cystic fibrosis. She couldn't even pronounce "cystic fibrosis," but she had read online that there was controversy over the movie, and she wanted me to help her understand why--was it not important for people who have cystic fibrosis to see themselves represented in films, what are the stakes involved if non disabled actors portray disabled actors, etc.
These vile parents and coaches couldn't begin to teach their children to "pass" as my child because my child actually has an ethical compass.
42
@UI
"David Mamet, by the way, I'm including you here as well for your insultingly misguided defense of your entitled friends."
David Mamet did his friends no favors with his obtuse and asinine defense of their actions. I'll add that I don't believe this is really about rich people. Yes, these defendants happen to be rich. However, there are rich people who are ethical and moral. Let's not buy into the idea that "everybody" -- in this case, all rich people -- does it. That's not the case. I've talked to many of my friends today, many of whom are middle class and a few of whom are rich and we all agree: these people make us sick.
4
Surely, you do not believe that very few kids get accommodations they do not need. I work in an elite private school in NY and as much as 1/3 of the students have extra time, many of them unlimited time. Money can buy you anything
35
So, what, do you not believe that any of those kids have a disability? Do you believe that they have a disability but the particular accommodation is mismatched to the specific disability(ies)? Are you privy to the detailed of their healthcare records and do you have the specific expertise to fully understand those records and their implications? Are you a recognized expert in assessing various specific disabilities and in how best to accommodate them on an individual level in the settings in which the kids find themselves? Has it occurred to you that perhaps you have 1/3 the student population at your elites private school because it has a good reputation for teaching kids with certain kinds of disabilities, and so it attracts and accepts a substantial number of kids with disabilities or whose parents are concerned that they may have that type of disability?
@MSW. Your USA apparently isn't near NYC, LA or Palo Alto. No way ⅓ of that pop really needs the extra accommodations. As this has exploded I have asked therapists & Docs I know regarding those type of requests - eyes roll with response - many parents badger for extra accommodations for their children. Yes, definitely some need assistance not in the numbers requested.
Sounds like your USA doesn't compel coaches to hand out medals or plaques for "participating". The rabbit hole is getting steeper by the month.
6
@MSW
To answer your question, here's my take: I have been a teacher for 25 years, in both public and private schools, and I cannot recall any instance of a student getting a diagnosis of a learning difference where the first accommodation wasn't extra time. It's the default, regardless of the actual issue: anxiety, processing speed, dyslexia -- take your pick. I don't think the science of learning and cognition is matched very effectively with accommodations at the individual level either. It's more like you going to a doctor with an ear infection. She prescribes an antibiotic. It will probably help, but it's not formulated for just you. No, I am not an expert by your definition -- though frankly you seem like you are hiding behind a lot of credentialism. Secondary schools are generally not a paradise of highly experienced clinicians, nor are most of the people I know who certify the diagnoses either. Some are generalists and a lot are therapists, but the resulting lists (IEPS, ILPS, etc.) are usually about 10 accommodations that could logically provide help to a kid. (Sometimes, for any kid for any topic.) They also seem designed to promote minimal proficiency, not to distinguish between higher levels of mastery. Lastly, I can tell you why I am often jaded about "extra time" -- because a surprisingly large number of kids have actually come right out and told me their parents are gaming the system. And for the record, not all of them like it much.
6
Are the students being expelled or if they have already received a degree, has it been rescinded. Doesn't seem they should be rewarded with a degree they do not deserve and would not have been able to attain without a criminal bribe.
6
@Hope I think some, like Felicity Huffman's daughter, are still in high school.
These kids are adults or young adults. As a parent, I simply cannot fathom either of my kids consenting to fraud. I am confident that if I suggested something even slightly shady, my teen/20s kids would be appalled, disappointed and even angry with me. What does this mean about the children of those accused?
22
Surely the FBI has better things to spend our money on. Elite admissions has and always will be a game for the wealthy. There are admissions set asides for them just like there are for athletes and oboe virtuosos. Please spend my tax dollars on catching violent criminals and human traffickers. Who cares about this really?
@Chef D I'm glad these people got busted. There are kids that work their tales off to get good scores and then accepted into colleges of their choosing. It's hard work and very rewarding. Capitolism has gone too far and this isn't fair. Money shouldn't buy admission, talent should.
10
@Chef D
this is only the tip of the iceberg.
5
@Chef D Obviously you don't think ethics are important, and that only some crimes matter. Luckily you are not in the majority on this debate. Many people feel cheated by this criminal behavior.
4
So this is about less than 50 students over about 7 years or averaging about 7 students per year? Sure, it is very bad, but all the reporting attention paid to the story makes is seem like every student at HYPMS cheated to get in and that's not the case at all. Is it cynical to write that practically everybody in the USA has an angle or leg up on something, such as job provided by in-laws or parents, a network for friends for access to apartments, referrals for many other things? While this college admission story is about the wealthy, that's too easy a target.
@Jim
I've learned over the years that when you see one roach in the house it's best to call the fumigators and start cleaning house.
The problem is the infestation you don't see. Yet.
4
@Jim I'm sure there are many more. And there are also many more ways for parents with $$ to give their kids an edge.
I remember a heart rending story here in NY several years ago about a teen student at the prestigious Dalton School who committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the school, on the Upper East Side, right in front of many younger children playing in the street below.
Some months later New York Magazine did a long story about him and his apparently "incomprehensible" death. One thing that struck me about his background was all the extra expensive private coaches he had. As I recall, he had a personal relationship coach because he had some difficulties with personal relationships. He had a "Latin III" coach because it was apparently felt he would be a more attractive college candidate if he showed deep interest in Latin. But I'm not certain he cared about advanced Latin, as they had to hire him a private coach to get through it and he was still having trouble with it and worrying about it. And of course, if he hadn't died I'm sure he woud have had the best private SAT coach money could buy.
The "edge" comes in all shapes and sizes.
@Jim
As I said to another poster who rationalized all this:
You must not have kids, or if you do, you don't care about them, which is sad. I don't have kids either, but I still care about them getting a fair shot at a good life. That is the way life should be in America, which after all is based on the idea of forming "a more perfect union."
Your comparison is also inadequate because if you hire your incompetent kid, you are the only one to suffer the consequences of his bad work. In this case, other hard-working kids and their parents are being cheated. There are real, innocent victims in this case, not in yours.
1
C’mon...the kids knew. They would have had to. Those that are still in should be kicked out and students who were wait listed should be pulled off those lists and given the opportunities they really deserve. Those are the stories I’d like to hear about.
30
It is so unfortunate that these privileged groups (by wealth, race, gender, etc) continue to rig the system. This is exactly why government interventions such as affirmative action are desperately needed to prevent the privileged from continuing to accumulate wealth and power in an unfair fashion.
Who is the (allegedly) grossly unethical and law-breaking psychologist who falsified healthcare records and conspired to invalidate the reliability of SAT and ACT and who, in effect, made a mockery of basic civil rights of people with disabilities and contributed to pernicious dismissal of their intelligence, the fairness of reasonable accommodations, and even of the existence of certain disabilities?
That psychologist's name, license number (while s/he still has one), and state where the practice is located all should be made public by the NYT and local news sources. Information on the status of any complaints to and actions by that person's licensing board, and to/by law enforcement also should be included, as should any reasons for not holding that person accountable.
If the claims about that psychologist are true, s/he has done damage to him/herself, the profession, the College Board, the creators and publishers of the psychological testing instruments and techniques, the universities and all future persons and entities that may rely on the results of his/her false diagnosis in assigning certain rights and responsibilities for the duration of the wrongly-diagnosed young adult's life and, in so doing, also harming people who actually do have a disability and are denied resources and/or opportunities that instead are given to the actually-non-disabled clients of this immoral "psychologist."
I hope s/he, the parents and young adults falsely diagnosed read and absorb this
22
Thinking about Kamilah Cambell who's SAT scores were under suspect because of an increase after taking prep class.
5
This is the real reason hardworking Americans can’t get ahead. The rich got their tax breaks, buy their kids a place in college, and hire Trump to point at immigrants as the reason hardworking Americans can’t make it. Talk about a rigged system.
11
Yes it's a glee inducing trainwreck but it also shines a light on how these corporate honchos operate. These shady underhanded bigwigs made fortunes selling goods Americans. Do they also use slave labor in their factories, cheat on taxes and lie about the safety of their products? How can Americans be expected to trust that these cheats don't cut dangerous corners with consumers products. This investigation needs to expand to all of these so called business tycoons. How many of these students still have paid professionals doing their homework and taking their tests?
10
This is the just newest iteration of how we cheat to get into college. My old microscope partner in medical school told me how he did it 20 years ago. His dad was a HS principal in Georgia. My partner would use the laminating machine in his dad's office to make fake IDs of football players and such. Then for $100 he would take their SAT for them, asking them beforehand, what score they wanted, within 100 points or so.
6
I’d never heard of Laurie Laughlin. But an article elsewhere in the NYT about her daughter, described as a social media “influencer” with “a million followers,” was truly dispiriting. That she is allowed anywhere near a campus that is economically off-limits to kids who care about more than inane superficialities is nothing short of tragic. Does not bode well for the States.
53
Right, but Daddy Kushner donating 2.5 mil to Harvard so Jared could get in...that’s okay because it was all above board? That hoax needs to change as well. Jared didn’t do all that well at his prestigious high school and his SAT’s were hardly stellar but all it took Harvard was a little greasing. A much more deserving kid didn’t get in the year Jared got accepted. Why are US citizens putting up with this?
24
It is not really anybody else’s business but Harvard’s and the other schools’ plus the testing firms. The actual crime here was money changed hands and the schools and firms had no knowledge of it. They are the victims. The FBI agent made that difference pretty clear. As for other people, do not go there if you have a problem. These schools are private. They do not owe you anything.
This will garner Bernie Sanders a lot more votes. We are tired of the crimes of the one percent!
5
my husband "gifted" his ivy league school to accept his son as a "legacy". so, i am not surprised. doesn't anyone have a clue about LEGACY students? george w bush was a C student legacy at Yale. i worked at harvard university for many years, i saw both legacy and scholarship students, there was a huge cultural gap between them. the scholarship students reported cleaning toilets for the legacy suites. there was plenty of bitterness to go around. this is nothing new, why now does the FBI "investigate" this? even donald trump jr. was a "legacy" after his dad gifted his school as well as jared kushner's father "gifting" harvard 2&1/2 million dollars. (my husband gave around a million) this has been an accepted practice for years. it has sustained the mediocre quality of business "leaders". when will the schools figure out that these legacies are not gifts that keep on giving.
13
@sc FWIW, look at JFK's and FDR's college grades, they were predominantly B-/C+ students. Oh yeah,talk about entitlement. Who had a father as crooked as Joe Kennedy? Why was he asked to head the SEC, because he knew how to break the rules, then there was the whole Nazi sympathizer thing.
1
“It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for USC?
Man for All Seasons (updated)
10
Absolutely "Shameless" Mr. Macy!
The stink of corruption in the US has truly reached an unbearable level. I’m disgusted to be here at this point. Good thing we have a president who can appeal to our better angels in helping right this ship.
2
Should not be surprised entitled parents raising entitled children.
7
This education scandal sounds like just what our Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would approve of! After all, she bought her way into the government, didn't she!
9
All those hours, days, years studying, practicing a sport or music, doing community service, making a difference, excelling, setting an example. And then the rejection. That’s heartbreaking for applicants and their families. But now to learn that one’s seat may be occupied by a cheat, an incompetent, a liar, a privileged slacker whose parents bought the seat, that’s devastating.
The “students” who were admitted thanks to fraud need to be expelled. The parents who committed the fraud need to be in jail. Any coach or administrator who was party to this disgusting cabal needs to go to prison as well. When I think about how hard my kids, and millions of others worked, it makes my blood boil. Shame, shame, shame on these sorry excuses for parents.
47
This is small peanuts. Colleges like USC and Michigan State let their employees rape students, and administrators and coaches mostly turn a blind eye. They're all part of the culture of Trump.
1
The Laughlins are not being hurt by this scandal one bit.
Think about it: last week their daughter (Olivia Jade) was a vlogger with a couple million followers. This week, she is nationally famous, on the front page of every major news outlet. She's become a household name overnight. In the entertainment business, that is pure gold.
They don't care if they're being made fun of right now. They'll laugh (no pun intended) all the way to the bank. They are probably fielding multimillion dollar reality show offers as I write this.
Heck, they probably phoned in an anonymous tip and reported Singer to the authorities themselves. Nobody had more to gain from this scandal.
3
What I don't understand is how these dimwitted rich kids can make it in the real world, post-graduation, after never having learned to work for anything in their lives before.
Oh, wait, silly me. They can always just become Special Advisor to the President.
6
@Matthew M
or marry the President
You think being a world class model is easy? Try it for a month. My guess is you would not make the cab fare to get back to the airport.
Can't blame this on immigrants from Mexico, or anywhere else. This mess was created by the privileged 1 percent. Do we need to say they are white?
2
@tony Capitalism is going too far. The people NEED to fight back. Money should NOT be able to buy everything.
Money can only buy things with a price on them. As Danny DeVito said in Heist, “That’s why they call it MONEY.”
High schools should offer free SAT and ASAT tutoring classes to graduating seniors who intend to attend college. Universities should set minimum standards based on SAT and ACT scores and GPAs, placed all applicants who meet or exceed the minimum standards into a pool of eligible candidates, and conduct a lottery to determine who gets admitted.
College admissions essays or life experiences shouldn’t count. No one know who really authors the essays and the wealthy can tailor their children’s life experiences. Besides, most students are stuck with the lifestyles their parents can afford.
10
@William Case
We were fortunate in that our children went to a school that offered test preparation during the school day. This, unfortunately, is an example of the discrepancy in the ability of districts across the nation to provide a uniform college preparation.
That said, there will always be the need for subjective criteria for admission. In fact, life experiences such as being able to play a musical instrument, or play a sport will always be a factor. Colleges have many programs to fill (i.e. the orchestra, drama department, sports, etc.) so standardized test scores (even academic grades, for that matter) are often weighted accordingly. Making the system as fair as possible becomes ever more difficult when the system can be gamed, in this case, both from the inside and out.
4
@Charles
Colleges should recruit athletes only from the student body. They could hang a a sign in the student union inviting students to a tryout. There is not need to offer scholarships. Millions of high school students play sports for nothing; college students would also play for nothing. In fact, colleges could charge them to play. The athletes would not be as good, but what would that matter? They just play games.
Music departments and drama departments should audition. Why make musicians and actors take academic courses?
@William Case
"here is not need to offer scholarships. "...
I couldn't agree with you more and would love to see a more European system where sports scholarships are practically nonexistent probably because academics comes first. However, here in America where college sports is big business that's not the reality.
Music and drama applicants often do audition and their high school experience (generally submitted via audio or video) is included as well. I guess, I can only agree with you on the sports part.
1
I went to McGill, a solid but not elite school, but spent two semesters at Duke, an A- elite school (at least in its own estimation). In my program (economics) the education at McGill was much superior: more rigorous standards and more diverse perspectives in a field much influenced by ideology.
My conclusion was that and undergrad education at elite schools is sort of like a designer clothing brand: desirable because its desirable, not desirable because it is functionally better (Post-grad is much different.)
So why is there a belief that an undergrad education at an elite school makes their grads elite, when in reality their education is no better than many solid lower ranked universities? Because the elites control who gets is, by tuition cost, legacies, and many other ways as well. In other words, the belief that expensive undergrad education produces elites serves to perpetuate the existing elites.
I prefer the more democratic and egalitarian Canadian system. No Harvards, MITs, or Stanfords, but plenty of Dukes where the tuition is affordable, and entry is more merit based.
88
The admissions process in Canada is far from perfect - without no standardized test, both private high schools and weak high schools result in inflated grades without the universal check of grade legitimacy that tests provide.
4
@Peeking Through the Fence: I sing high praises of Canada’s universities as well as its public school system. My son attended a public high school in Canada and did his undergraduate work at the University of Victoria where he completed a co-op program in biochemistry. He was accepted into the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in NYC and graduated with honours. His studies at U Vic prepared him well for the challenges of med school at Columbia.
8
@Tim Mosk I don't disagree. Just other ways to game the system. Solution: do even better and make sure there are spots for all qualfied applicants. Sell spots to foreign students only after qualified local kids are in.
As a former college instructor I can not believe that these student's faculty and other staff didn't notice that something was wrong. Did the parents continue to pressure the teachers? I only had that happen once and the student got help with some of her basic learning, self confidence problems at the request of the dean of students to her parents. She had reported to her parents that I was anti-Semitic and did not respect lawyers and that was why she got a bad grade. (Drawing course.) I did not have a clue she was Jewish or daughter of a lawyer and I was married to a Jewish man and had nothing but good experiences with lawyers and found law fascinating. But I did not change the grade (a B-) ; the student was completely disengaged and wanted to just socialize. The college backed me up. The student got help and I bet the father never ever interfered again. But I must say the whole circumstance was unpleasant.
36
@Laura S.
I find it sad and pathetic how educational institutions have become so political. A friend of mine quit teaching because he said he was constantly hounded by students wanting higher grades. The attitudes and behavior of students such as you describe shock me. I suppose I used to think it was parents with low morality, but it is so widespread it is obviously a problem in our culture.
8
I wondered the same thing. If these students are not up to par to begin with, how can they flourish once they're there?
7
@Laura S. As a TA in a pre-med program in the 90s at a state university, part of my job was proctoring exams. Or at least pretending to.
The first time I noticed a student cheating, I brought it to the professor's attention and she instructed me to ignore it, saying the university would not back her up and in fact might punish her for drawing a parent's ire.
If anything, Americans have become more litigious since then.
9
All "athletic programs" are beside the point of higher education.
Yet they siphon off a great deal of money, with a concurrent loss of taxes to the government, and are now demonstrably abetters of corruption and the circumvention of our stated ideals.
Well, who states 'em?
N. b. Times reports few other countries count sports in college admission decisions.
26
@mike
College sports appear to be another example of "American exceptionalism". I saw nothing like this in German universities.
1
@mike Not always. At my alma matter, Cornell, it allowed students (and students of color in particular) to benefit from a great Cornell education. And please know that these students studied hard, as Cornell both placed and enforced academic probation.
@Jas
There are other way to aid students who need it.
Professional sports have no legitimate role in an educational institution.
Was it worth it?
7
When the leader of our country appears to be a scam artist and crook, it's no surprise "the wealthy" think it's OK to cheat.
65
Since the scheme went on for a number of years, they must have found their inspiration elsewhere.
2
The parents knew that their children were too lazy and too stupid to get into the colleges that they thought they wanted. Therefore, the parents cheated. The parents should do jail time and any students who knowingly helped cheat should do jail time as well.
11
Why don't you list all the cheaters, rather than just a few?
31
How ironic that this story has broken just after Michael Cohen admitted to concealing Trump's grades.
56
@cl. And how ironic we never saw Obama’s.
1
@Jackson:Did we need to see Obama's grades just because Trump and Fox News demanded it? Trump's taxes seem more relevant.
9
track the kids down. take away their degree's , notify their employers. Send the parents to jail.
if still in school dump them on the curb and have the limo pick them up
27
There is also the issue of what this does to America as a whole, when less able, less hard working, less intelligent students are taking the top slots, and the top jobs,(Trumps SATs are secret) end of empire.
39
So far no reports have mentioned the students. It seems impossible for a student to be unaware of a scam when she obtains admission on a water-polo athletic scholarship, a sport she knows she doesn’t play. This scandal points to a general culture of gross entitlement in which, for many, the ends justify the means.
83
It is not illegal for a coach to recruit you regardless of your abilities. Or take a test and have someone fix it unknown to you. It is illegal to be part of a financial transaction to support those actions. My guess the whole process kept the kids away or told them something that was not illegal. We know the coach and she has a spare slot. You won’t actually take the scholarship money or even a locker so it is ok.
What if a coach actually did it for a friend and no money passed hands? Is that illegal or even unethical?
This just certifies how most of the elites get elite degrees in life - not through sweat and hard work like most of us - but through their connections .
11
@Matt. How did you come up with “most”?
1
Could this be an iceberg? Indeed!
5
The “extra time” game isn’t the only game that’s played.
My son goes to a challenging boarding school, and he complains about the many kids who have nothing wrong with them whose parents pay for a diagnosis. These kids get extra time all high school tests and exams.
Standard procedure for these kids is to also get ADHD meds. They’re coached in what to say to the doctor to get the prescription. These drugs help them focus and are widely taken during exam periods.
The system is pretty rotten.
33
The media is wrong to proiminetly name two well known women when so many 0.01% men have been named and are being prosecuted.
They are also wrong not to take the "elite schools' to task. Where is Harvard? Where are the top sports recruiting universities that the 0.01% virtually have taken over?
It is time to tell WE THE PEOPLE the full story and for the media to stop trying to protect their 0.01% brethren. WE demand the restoration/preservation of Social and Economic Equity in EVERY segment of OUR society.
WE CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH. CAN YOU?
8
@njglea. Can you please stop your WE THE PEOPLE nonsense?
1
Dare we hope for justice here? The rich and famous actually can't buy their way out of this? Don't think so. Unfortunately, I expect business as usual.
On another note, my daughter, who had learning differences, was tested repeatedly, tutored for years, sent to special programs for reading help, etc., etc., for years. Yes, she qualified for extra time. And she deserved and needed it. A lot of commenters here are not well versed about LD, but sure do have strong, if ignorant opinions.
9
@jean valliere, the students that applies for extra time should be given that opportunity but not be tested in a room alone with only a adult overseeing the room as mentioned in news articles, the person supervising the room often was paid to take or help on the SAT test. Students with disabilities that need more time should grouped together in a room and tested together so the supervisor cannot help cheat.
2
@jean valliere, the students that applies for extra time should be given that opportunity but not be tested in a room alone with only a adult overseeing the room as mentioned in news articles, the person supervising the room often was paid to take or help on the SAT test. Students with disabilities that need more time should be grouped together in a room and tested together so the supervisor cannot help cheat.
@jean valliere, the students that applies for extra time should be given that opportunity but not be tested in a room alone with only a adult overseeing the room as mentioned in news articles, the person supervising the room often was often paid to take or help on the SAT test. Students with disabilities that need more time should grouped together in a room and tested together so the supervisor can help cheat.
How Widespread is Cheating on the SAT/ACT?
Why doesn't The College Board and ACT offer a $10,000 to $100,000 reward for each reported incidence of cheating--and after investigation report a cheater to the same colleges that the student had selected to have received their scores. This would both punish the cheaters, deter new cheaters, and protect the integrity of the system.
6
Moral rot apparently infests a broad range of American institutions and contaminates the well being of our country.
Money is our universal value and suffocates our better selves.
We have been privy to the power of privilege, underscoring the false belief that merit and studious discipline exercise primacy in admission decisions to elite universities, that intellectual effort and adhering to the demands of ethically proper behavior by hard working high school student applicants would be esteemed by these institutions of higher learning, and would never be dismissed in deference to those feckless applicants whose only recommendations are money, power and social position.
Any university degree is worthless if it does not entail a moral education; an elite university should be an aristocracy of mind, and should not allow itself to be party to tawdry and illegal hustles. It is the responsibility of professors and university administrators to exercise guardianship over the moral ideals that are at the heart of any genuinely valuable education.
Professors should reclaim their historic leadership roles in governing their universities, forcefully calling out those corrupt corporate practices that expect higher education to kowtow to the arrogance and entitlement of money, power and social position. Corporate barbarians are within the academic gates and must be forthrightly confronted before the stench of their mercenary corruption befouls all of university life.
5
oh yeah, professors who are already at the mercy of the university, trying to earn tenure. Or better yet, adjuncts, who teach for pennies and have no security... put that burden on them.
2
@g
Non-tenured professors are professors in name only; adjuncts are academe’s version of temporary workers. Both groups are without power or influence, so it would be foolish to rely on their intercession.
Tenured professors, however, do have power and possibly even influence. They are in a decent position to reassert their historic leadership roles in the governance of their universities. They may not be successful but they are in a solid position to try.
Courage would be required.
1
Imagine what some poor, hardworking kids could accomplish with a healthy dose of Affluenza. I’m willing to bet it’s a lot more than Skip and Chelsea.
1
This has to run deeper. Who has not been caught? They said that from the period of 2011 onward...Who’s children have already graduated as a result of this hoax?
7
@Beth Oops, grammatical error. Whose children rather than Who's. Ironic.
In an era where there's a steady stream of things to be outraged about, this one really galls me. Not because I'm so naive as to think this hasn't happened since forever, but because I'll bet these industry leaders and CEOs talk a great game about "merit"...for other people. For their own mediocre offspring, not so much. How many talented kids get passed over for the pampered children of the rich? It's infuriating.
31
These parents are in serious trouble. This case has gotten national attention and people are outraged. Nobody likes to see rich and powerful people so flamboyantly cheating the system.
Most of these people have been caught on tape acknowledging these shenanigans. They will have a hard time claiming that they were simply led astray by a crooked college advisor.
The DAs in these cases will be under enormous public pressure to severely punish these parents.
16
@Sherman Yep. Its disgusting and wrong what they did. But I bet ultimately they will be the most over prosecuted and over sentenced people ever. These are not school shooters.
1
Note that Andrew E. Lelling, the prosecutor bringing the charges, is a graduate of SUNY Binghamton (yay!). Note also that he is a Trump appointee and a member of the Federalist Society, "an organization of conservatives and libertarians".
4
Why not just be open and transparent about payments for access? Whether it's alumni making donations just before their kid applies as a legacy, the Kushners donating a building, or bribing a coach to list your Instagram makeup-tips kid as a budding crew star, it all amounts to the same thing.
Maybe just let each school conduct a public, web-based auction off 5% of their incoming class slots as a non-refundable contribution to the endowment. If you really want your kid at USC, pony up and let everyone see it on the public record.
Best of all, since those kids often tend to wash out by sophomore year, you can repeat the auction for the same seat in no time.
6
I would think most of these schools would just accept your kid if you gave them 500k
9
@Brendan O’Donnell As I understood the article yesterday, and Singer's explanation of his scheme to prospective parents, this is a less expensive method than a direct donation - which most, if not all, elite schools and other schools will engage in. If it cost Jared Kushner's father $2 million to get him in, then now it probably costs about $5 million or more. This was presented as a sure way to get one's child into a particular college for much less. Singer termed it a "side door" as opposed to a "back door" where wealthy gave many millions for admission.
4
The fake sports recommendations are bad, but it's the SAT that is the standard that get's you into college. They need to find and prosecute those who have breached and compromised that system.
5
I just have to say that as a grandmother of a USC graduate, who worked very hard to gain entrance into that school, I hope this scheme does not cast doubt on her or the majority of kids who entered college legitimately. What a shame.
I saw the video of that girl who didn't want the education part but just to "party and stuff." Sickening. Her parents are responsible for that, I hope they are proud.
26
This is the tip of the iceberg. Standardized tests do not measure anything but someone's ability to take a standardized test. They do not correlate to academic success or determination. Rich kids who can afford test prep and fake accomadation have a real edge over a poor kid from nowhere. There is incredibly widespread cheating especially in the orient. Essays are very often written or rewritten by paid advisors. The very fact that athletic prowess in an obscure sport gives you preference is enough to I dictate how rotten the entire system is. On top of that a college education for your child is one of the worst values you will ever get for your mnet. The only thing worse than sending your kid to college is not sending them college.
3
My child was diagnosed with dyslexia in first grade and ADHD a bit later. Batteries of testing were required by school every four years to allow extra time for testing and other accommodations. We do not have money and paying for this testing was very hard. Despite years of testing we were told that accommodation for the College Board test was in no way guaranteed. In fact the application had to be made through the school Advisor and we waited nervously for months before it was granted. I don’t know how Mr Singer did what he did - in my experience the College Board procedures are brutal!
12
This scandal is a lot about the status anxiety of the parents, who have high status needs and want to be able to say their children are in elite schools. They have a moral deficit that has become common among the entitled wealthy in America: they believe they can buy this privilege for their children, rather than help them to earn it.
12
The unintended larger picture about the college cheating scandal is that parents are evidently aware that their kids are not the sharpest pencils in the box, but in order not to “hurt their feelings” they decide to go behind their backs and pay for large-scale cheating operations. Not only are they not smart enough to deserve their place at elite schools, but they are also unaware of the support they received. This way, society ends up with individuals who
1. believe there are great (Trump: “I would give myself an A+), and
2. believe they have made it all the way on their own. (Trump: “I received a small loan of $1 million from my father.”)
Society-at-large then has to bear the brunt for individuals who have no sense of the privilege they enjoy, no humility, no work-ethic, while being at the same time unintelligent, occupying positions they are undeserving of, and are generally self-serving, entitled, and ungrateful.
30
I happen to know Rick Singer, the college consultant at the center of this whole thing, put his house in Newport Beach on the market recently, at about $1 million under market value. Someone is clearly trying to liquidate assets quickly to pay for their defense at trial.
6
@Shane Must be for restitution as he entered a guilty plea and thus there will be no trial. But he must owe money for the fraud charges, plus he will likely go to jail and so will need liquid assets.
1
@Shane
There won't be a trial. He already plead guilty
1
@GMooG Right, sounds like fines and restitution. I wondr if the government will allow the sale since it's so far under value, or if he's just trying to drum up interest.
I hear a lot of rhetoric about a sense of entitlement among young people today. I guess now we know where its coming from.
I wonder how these kids are performing, academically once they get in. Clearly, they are not academically prepared for this caliber of school. They must be struggling. It makes me wonder if the money is still flowing. I also wonder if these kids of entitled parents would be happier attending a school that they are better suited for academically. Its a sad state of affairs.
2
I wonder when the first civil suit is filed by or on behalf of an applicant who wasn't admitted and against which college.
4
What is criminal is that students who are not academically prepared are getting spots because they are athletes, legacy, from an unpopulated area, etc. If you are an athlete great, but only get an admit if you still are academically qualified.
We need to move to an objective standard of admissions. The major source of angst for the high school kids is that the process is so nebulous - it is a cruel practice that needs to change.
3
I'm curious about the high schools that these kids came from and what knowledge--if any--they had that this was going on. Counselors from small, elite private schools (where most of the wealthy attend) review applications closely before they are submitted--they had to have seen that a kid said they were an athlete when they weren't--where are they in this story?
22
I attended USC for grad school between 2011 and 2014. There are a lot of nice things to say about USC, but I also developed three strong negative impressions of the university while I was there.
- There was an enormous amount of money floating around. The week I arrived, USC received a $200 million donation that was, I think, the largest ever in higher education at the time. A lot of that money went to good use, but overall there was a pervasive sense of greed and self-dealing. Just as an example, I saw professors regularly assign their own books in their courses, something which never happened at my undergrad college.
- There were a lot of great grad programs, and I met many brilliant undergrads. But after being a TA for a couple of years, I thought the undergrad education as a whole was a complete joke.
- There was complete chaos in administration. No one seemed to be in charge or know what the actual rules or processes were. This was true in my program and many others I encountered. In a speech to grad students, I heard one of the deans describe himself as a failure who had obtained his job only through the idiocy of his superiors. I think it was meant to be a joke, but at the same time, it didn't feel like a joke.
I was not surprised when a major abuse scandal erupted soon after I left. And I'm certainly not surprised that USC has shown up in the center of this scandal.
8
Being a Notre Dame grad, neither am I.
1
It seems to me Ivy Schools as well as other Universities also need to clean up their act and NOT grant admission to students with poor ACT/SAT scores just because the students' very wealthy parents donated millions of dollars to aformentioned universities or colleges. This is blatantly wrong on so many levels.
Universities that allow very wealthy parents to "buy" their childrens' way into a prestiges university or college despite poor ACT/SAT scores deny better students any chance to compete fairly.
1
It's ironic that one of the coaches implicated came from a working class background, became an Ivy League grad..... and then used his status to assist the privileged...
3
@Patrick G But how much could a sailing coach, for example, really earn that a check for $400,000 wouldn't be enticing?
The biggest concern that parents and potential students have is how are we going to make standardized testing and admissions fair? Will my kid get a fair shake? Convince us!
1
The only question I have is after what year in time should I fully devalue the credentials of individuals graduating from these top tier schools - 2005?, 2010?
4
I am 100% behind arresting these people and exposing their wrongdoing, but can the NYT explore how widespread this problem actually is? Maybe that's a topic for another article, but there are 20 million college students (a generous approximation) in the US. This investigation netted fifty (50) arrests. Crazy idea: Let rich people bribe their way into schools. Charge them 2-3x tuition and use the profit for scholarships? Would it be as bad if there was some transparency to this and the excess cash was used to fund education for other students rather than a Mercedes for the collegiate Tennis coach? I think the broader, more complex issue, and one that affects exponentially more students, is the inequality in access to college admission Prep courses. That being said... these parents and coaches deserve the harsh sunlight they're currently getting.
4
So now potential employers of job candidates with degrees from elite universities must ask themselves whether the applicant is actually one of the “best and brightest” or a person of mediocre ability who has been taught that it is acceptable to succeed by cheating.
If the individual is not in the top third of their class, there is an unacceptable likelihood of the later scenario.
2
For a start, end athletic scholarships across the board. Let the professional sports industry create and subsidize minor/developmental leagues for takented teenagers.
Students who genuinely require extra rime to take the S.A.T. and A.C.T. must do so at public tesy centers and be monitired by independent proctors.
I await Lori Loughlin's next Hallmark series, "College Admissions Auctions".
3
What a mess!
Most of the parents will be first offenders, trying to help their children advance in life, but the allegations, if true, suggest a high degree of moral turpitude on the part of all involved, including the children unfortunately. It is hard to believe so many prominent people went along with this. The only explanation is that the practice was much more widespread than just these incidents.
2
@gbc1
it's known as legacy. these students were not legacy but the practice of gifting students a place at a prestigious university, even if they can not compete academically, has been going on for a very very long time
1
Athletics-related admissions practices in the Ivies and the mini-Ivies dwarfs all other questionable admissions practices, including those alleged for legacies and affirmative action. In universities such as Yale and Dartmouth, or colleges such as Middlebury and Williams, 20%-30% of admissions fall into the “recruited for athletics” category.
What we’ve seen with Mr. Singer is just the tip in the iceberg. I truly hope that some enterprising reporter will dig into this in more detail, ferret out some basic facts, and go after the college/university admissions industry.
2
Can someone explain why it is the parents who are charged and not the institutions that accepted bribes?
4
The individuals who took the bribes are being charged.
@Dan,
Because the schools were unaware they were being defrauded.
They trusted that everyone they were dealing with was on the up-and-up -- coaches, SAT folks, teachers writing recommendations, advisers, College admissions doesn't work if the process resembles applying for a top secret clearance at the CIA.
Whether the schools turned a blind eye to what might otherwise have been an obvious scam remains to be determined.
@Dan
Because none of the institutions accepted bribes.
Read the article.
1
The parents of the “influencers” in this story desperately want their kids to go to a good school, but the kids are so rich already that they have no need of a good education. And worst of all, they don’t care for or want one. As “influencers”, AKA leaches on society, they already have incomes that puts them in the top few percent. I just can’t process the deluge of irony here.
4
@Bob Carlson
these kids are mediocre at best. obviously they can not compete on their own. they can not make it on their own, at least their parents thought so. let's not forget george w bush got into yale as a legacy student, he was a "c" student and it showed
1
Yesterday's indictments were only for Mr. Singer's most recent clients (excluding, one presumes, the 2019 class of student-cheaters who are this very week waiting for admissions letters). Yet Singer had business for a couple of decades. Are we only seeing the tip of this iceberg?
I join those disgusted by all of these people's actions, both in the name of all students who worked their tails off for literally years on end, then didn't gain admissions to these colleges even when highly qualified; and especially, in the name of legitimately learning-disabled students bound for college.
It's incredibly hard to believe that the universities didn't know what was going on.
And as for the cheating students... how on earth to believe that they didn't know what they were involved in, when (1) they were flown to Houston to take SAT exams, (2) they dressed willingly to pose for photographs of them "playing" sports they didn't play, (3) they attended open-arm welcome receptions for "admitted recruited athletes" of the same sports at the universities they are now attending - and where one presumes, they are not playing the sports in question - and finally (4) when they sat for their first-ever diagnosis of a learning disability with their "college consultant's" psychologist, not the psychologist or remedial specialist of the school they'd been attending for years.
These students should all be expelled, or at least made to re-sit for SAT, ACT, etc., then reapply.
66
@American Mom
Expelled yes,
You just made a sound argument that they knew what they were doing, not sure why a reputable school would want cheating students. Cheating on exams, filing false records, impersonating an athlete and an honest student. Move aside and let the real applicant enter, there are plenty next in line who deserve that spot. There must be consequences for bad behavior.
6
Who believes that this was the first and only time the people involved in this scandal acted unethically or illegally (innocent until proven guilty) to get ahead in business and life? The idea that success trumps everything has become deeply embedded in our consumer driven, celebrity obsessed society.
4
"Yale has been the victim of a crime?" Seriously, that's what your lawyers told you to say? Blame the coach? It sounds like Peter Solvey is confident if the coach was not there, the school would not be in this mess. Really? And you "might make changes to it's admission process?" I wonder if the FBI "might" do a little more investigating?
4
the tragedy is that this will come to nothing, celebrities and other indicted will cry their crocodile tears, the public will forgive them, they will resume their lives, their kids will continue with their cheating, making more money than any of us can imagine.. sadly this is how the world works...
3
My son has ADHD and definetly needs extended time when he takes college entrance exams. I'm glad the ACT and SAT give him this important opportunity!
4
There's no guarantee that in the real world that this extra time to complete tasks will be available as a "reasonable accommodation." Work life isn't the protected world of school. Better plan on upping coping strategies in case the extra time is not considered a "reasonable accommodation" by a future employer. The employer defines what's reasonable.
(And before you claim that I don't know what I'm talking about. I have been multiply disabled my entire life and supported myself in the workforce at a professional level my entire life. I have also investigated alleged employment discrimination complaints. )
1
I grew up on a farm. I am an immigrant. My mum never went to school. My dad only went to school up until high school. I never had an example of why I should pursue school until I was about 11 and realized we were eating same food: rice and lentils (Kichdi) about every single day. When i started school in Katy, Texas, majority of the white students came from upper middle class and had tutors, and their mums didn't work so they would take them to tutoring. At a young age I was thought that the system wanted me to be where I was and that there was no mobility. I went to college through federal grants and received an accounting degree. I left the neighborhood I grew up in (majority of it was recent immigrants). I moved to Los Angeles and now work at a big studio. Now that I am working towards a long fulfilling career, I realized that I was behind my coworkers. They got jobs through connections/parents. They are always given the benefit of doubt that they are smarter/better than me because they went to schools like Yale and Harvard. Rich average white men will always have more opportunities in life than I will ever will.
7
I think the perfect punishment for those complicit students would be to require them to serve on the water polo or soccer team. The physical exertion necessary to compete with their teammates would provide an invaluable lesson.
8
Maybe the best solution is transparency. Perhaps college applications should require applicants to reveal their test prep methods, naming books, schools, counselors, consultants, or tutors and the amount of money paid for such services, if any. That would allow admissions officers to take advantages and disadvantages into consideration. And give reason to expel students who lie.
2
My kids go to the same school as some of those who parents were caught--its no surprise that this happened. What is shocking is how easy it was for these students to cheat on the SAT and ACT. Parents giving money to schools to get their kids in is not a new thing here, but the SAT and ACT tests are seen by the rest of us as equalizers to offset the influence of that money. The names and positions of those ACT and SAT administrators who were caught need to be made public as well. All I have read so far is that a private school head in LA and a high-school teacher in Houston were arrested. Who are they? If they are succumbing to bribes, I think its safe to assume its happening in other corners of the USA as well.
3
It is laughable that the university claims to be the victim. This scandal reveals how a system ripe for manipulation, was so easily defrauded. It has been common knowledge that test taking has been coached, that college essays are reworked by families and professionals, admission packets are padded, recommendations are refined. There certainly are instruments which may be used to detect fraud, outside influence; interrogations that would reveal deception, but the will on the part of the schools to make this process honest and equitable has been absent. It is time for some self examination and outside investigation to root out the corruption, malfeasance and narcissism at the heart of the aloof, arcane ritual of college admissions.
10
More celebrity and elite fraud charges are likely on the way. The short indictment that lists the Singer cohort summarizes the charges against them and all the schools applied to. The long indictment that includes the 30+ celebs/developers/etc details, in the main, the USC and Georgetown plots, but the short indictment mentions Yale, UT and Wake Forest among other schools. Singer clearly was the man among men, this was a long sting and the "Edge" people have no incentive to cover for the parents and all the incentive to squawk. Assume this is the tip of the iceberg.
One can only hope that this further damage to the myth of merit helps people see that the only thing that will change this is the total transformation of the rules that allow legacies and donors to create the conditions in which buying your kid a spot at college--even when the kid has no intention of taking college seriously, and will have a trust fund and live comfortably for the rest of their lives, and is thereby depriving someone else who needs it more--is perfectly normal and even expected.
In the words of Mr McGlashan, one of the parents indicted: "Pretty funny. The way the world works these days is unbelievable." Yeah, man. Pretty funny.
4
A quick fix to relevel the standardized testing playing field would be to eliminate the time constraints for all people taking the tests. Everyone should have as much time as they need to finish the test.
3
Actor William H. Macy, a fine actor, should view his role in Fargo again.
11
@Diogenes And Lori Laughlin might reconsider her role on When Calls the Heart, where her character represents the moral compass of a whole town. At least we can now truly comprehend what a fine actress she is.
8
I have to wonder what this is going to do to the cost of research papers and lab work done by scholarship students for the likes of Ms. Singer and her ilk. Otherwise, how will she be able to stay in school and continue to build her brand? Is this the invisible hand of the free market we've heard so much about?
4
When one or more of these criminal trials commences, I hope someone from the community of special needs students, perhaps an actual student or parent or special education teacher, gives testimony on behalf of the government. Then we will have a clearer window into something we already know; it's the work, intellectual, emotional, and physical that gets done by all three, student, parent, teacher. Along with the work of instruction goes a steady stream of assessment, minutely documented and evaluated.
That wealthy and well-educated adults find it in their interest or their children's interest to attempt to game a system delicately calibrated to give students with disabilities a compensating opportunity to learn, grow, and achieve more is an outrage of grotesque proportions. For every one of those wrongfully admitted students, a rightful student was denied admission.
How do we undo that injustice?
2
I am pleased that Yale is planing to re-examine its admissions processes, particularly with regard to athletics. That's what needs to happen at every school.
I do find it cringy that these colleges are portraying themselves as victims though.
6
My sons, both in their twenties, never even considered, or had any interest in elite schools. They both attended state schools in the heart of the Midwest (Wisconsin and Michigan). One is now a medical resident at Johns Hopkins and the other has a successful art career in Manhattan. Both are completely self sufficient financially.
This whole scandal reminds me of what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the rich, " Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."
35
What will these colleges do with students who relied on fake credentials who either are still enrolled or with those who have graduated? A realistic punishment would be expulsion. Let them take the credits they have earned and apply them to a degree at a school that they can honestly win admission to. As for those who have graduated, it is not so obvious. But if possible, I'd like to see their degrees rescinded. They can keep their credits but they should not be allowed to claim the schools they attended as their alma mater. As for the parents--and these are the real engines for this scheme--who paid to have the "honor" of name dropping their children's elite schools. Their punishment will come when their children recognize, I hope, that they never want to model themselves on their parents.
130
Presumably these students will have earned very poor grades if they were not qualified to attend. I suspect some of them probably got reasonable grades and did the work necessary to earn their degrees. Some might have gotten into decent colleges, if not into ivy leagues, without cheating. They went to good high schools and had test prep help. But their fears and their parents’ fears tempted them to cheat and make a good college a sure thing.
1
@Alexandra Hamilton
I’ve been wondering the same thing.
And are some of these kids doing much better than their unadorned credentials would predict?
What will be the consequences for these kids? How will that be determined?
And I’ll never understand why people do this.
2
@Alexandra HamiltonThere's no reason to think that these students could not keep up at their elite schools. Most applicants could probably do the same. The likelihood that many of the faked credential students flunked out is small. The issue is what to do with them--both those in school and those who graduated.
3
The medical time extension had created a racket for students to get extra time which makes a huge difference on a time base test. This is fueled by private school counselors telling students they need health exemptions, parents seeking to give their kids an edge, and pediatricians willing to look the other way. The College Board won’t admit the issue and doesn’t even note who gets extra time.
9
@Observer
I think there should be two sets of standardized tests; one timed and one not (i.e. give 2x the normal amount of time) that everyone can take.
2
Attending an elite college is definitely an advantage. But the advantage is exaggerated, largely because of misunderstanding. For example, people believe that the Supreme Court justices all went to Harvard and Yale. But only two went to those colleges. It's the Law Schools that they all attended. And no undergraduate at Harvard has been President since JFK. As for all the Nobel Prize winners credited to Harvard, most are Harvard professors who went to colleges all over the world.
Approximately 80% of graduates of elite colleges get advanced degrees. And admissions and excellence at elite law schools, med schools, and business schools are the real ticket to success. The 20% of undergrads who don't attend grad school aren't usually far from the most successful. The most prominent exception I can think of -- YoYoMa-- didn't need Harvard College to make it big.
You may respond that admission at elite colleges gets you into the elite grad schools. But that is not particularly true. For example, Harvard Law School has students from well over 150 colleges, many of which (eg, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) are anything but elite.
I am not aware of any admissions scandals at elite graduate schools nor do they extend athletic scholarships, nor do they admit anyone without an astronomically high LSAT score.
So the real king makers and the real kings aren't much affected by this case.
3
@Liberty In. My goodness, do you recommend the death penalty?
1
@Michjas I’m from Tennessee for 30 years. And I take issue with the idea there are colleges in the US more fraudulent than UT Chattanooga; the one with the choo-choo train nearby. We take seriously our ranking in just about everything as the most corrupt in the nation. The kleptocracy is alive and well in Chattanooga. Bob Corker made out well on building malls there, and the private coffers/foundations there won’t touch a boy who grew up working at Luther’s Lube Rack, no matter how well versed in differential first-order quantificational logic. By the number of rich smooth-skin frat boys, and the women with long necks necessarily belonging to wealth at UT Chattanooga, we sneer at the idea a stupid SAT/ACT test score in any way prevents admission. You may want to reconsider your assessment, and I hope you will.
@Liberty In
"many of the spoiled get into these universities because of legacy status."
This is a commonly held belief, but not true. I know, because I attended an Ivy undergrad and law school, and never met a legacy in 7 years.
There is a long, storied history of Daddy Moneybags cutting a check for an endowment or a chair or some other scheme to get his under-achieving son into his alma mater. The whole concept of "legacy" admissions is structured around this.
But we used to have something to counteract this phenomenon in the USA: Fully funded and accredited public colleges and universities. These were world class institutions that could meet and often exceed the facilities, faculty, and level of instruction at private institutions of higher education.
But now, after decades of budget cuts and privatization, once world-class institutions have been decimated. One only need look at what the handiwork of eight years of Scott Walker and his cronies have wrought in Wisconsin, once a model for public higher education, to understand how we got to this point. And this is a feature, not a bug. The plutocracy would much rather not have such a large class of skilled, informed workers to compete with them for resources and question their authority.
And so, while it seems the President can find it within our means to expand our already bloated military budget by leaps and bounds, an affordable, quality higher education for every American who seeks to peruse one becomes a pipe dream.
70
@TGF. Well, you know States could step up and provide more funding. It’s amazing how the Left Coast always needs funding from the federal government.
1
Bravo!!!! Truer words have seldom been spoken!
1
These Moneybags didn't just make a donation (and perhaps some of them made no donation) to the schools in question.
They conspired to commit several layers of fraud against numerous parties, and entangled their children in their crimes.
At least with straight contributions to the school, everyone (or many people) in general at the school benefit from the contribution, and no one is lying about the applicant's qualifications or seeking/producing/transmitting falsified healthcare records in order to flout the law and the dignity and rights of people with disabilities by doing the equivalent of donning blackface!
4
One of our interns five years ago was working two jobs totaling 64 hours per week, taking 16 units (with a 3.6 overall GPA), and interning in our office eight hours per week. She had worked to help support her family while in high school while achieving similarly high grades, too.
She had wanted to go to a more prestigious university but didn’t get accepted. Now we know a possible reason why.
169
My son has had a diagnosis and accommodations since 5th grade -he is in college now. Getting extended time on his ACT involved gathering testing data done at the end of 8th grade and working with the Special Ed coordinator at the high school. When he took the test with extended time he had to take it across three mornings in the SE coordinator's testing space. She personally proctored the test. He missed all AM classes those three days and it was very disruptive to his schedule. Fortunately he scored a 31 over all with a 33 in math and at that point we decided as a family- good enough. I could not put him through that again in good conscience for another point or risk a lower score.
One and done - well prepared, and while this score not ivy league - he is thrilled at his Big ten school.
The top 25 schools are another world from the next tier. He was not there- it was not the right place for him. The most important decision is picking the right place and the right program -
FYI - he applied to 9, got into 7 and 5 gave him merit scholarships. As a science major - test prep was absolutely necessary as the entrance to this programs is more scrutinized.
13
well done to your son!!
3
So, this isn't clear to me: These students who purported to be athletes. It sounds like the coach recommended them for admission - but did they also then receive scholarships for that sport? Were they required to play? Was someone who did play the sport then displaced from the team, if that happened?
3
@Sally
My guess is they had a career ending "injury" just before the season was to start. In this case the scholarship would be rescinded but not admission.
16
@Sally When they arrived in the fall, the fake athletes informed the athletic departments they had suffered injuries over the summer. They never practiced nor competed with the teams that purported to recruit them.
@Sally Not everyone who is a recruited athlete necessarily receives an athletic scholarship. Athletic scholarships can also range from $500 to cover textbooks to a full ride, renewable annually.
I worked in college athletics for 15 years, so I'm a bit perplexed as to how the coaches managed to get a kid preferential admission that no one but themselves allegedly saw in action. A photo and list of alleged accomplishments isn't normally the basis on which one is recruited and offered admission to a DI institution, even in a non-revenue sport such as sailing or crew.
4
It is simple for me. No extra curriculum activities, no sport achievement or the discretion of the examiners should have a role in college admission. And yes not even the color of your skin or how poor\rich your parents are.
I am not sure if any other nation has this method to pick one candidate respect to an other based on what is good for "the institution mission".
The college should have their own admission testing and all the candidates who want to join should participate. You are admitted to a college based on a number. A number/ranking that comes from your SAT score and the one you receive based on the college you apply for. Now it is also based on how you look or who you know and how you build your case; not just your measurable value. Don't let me start on why people with same income and same grade may get different financial aids.
6
@GR. Other countries decide early on who gets the college track.
GR, it is all about money. With budget cuts to education, these schools need extra cash.
Who is "actress Lori Laughlin" and who is her "designer" husband "Mossimo?" Never heard of either of them until now-- this scandal could be good brand enhancement for them I guess - more visibility etc.
15
@ellienyc Lori Laughlin is an actress most famously known for her role on Full House/Fuller House as Aunt Becky who was married to John Stamos' character.
@ellienyc I think Mossimo made the sweaters that Bill Cosby wore while he played a dentist. I could be wrong though.
1
And now with their white privilege they will buy their way out of this mess, and by the summer will be laughing about it with friends in the Hamptons and the Vineyard.
221
@zigful26. I get the impression that Mr Macy, his wife , Felicity Huffman, and actress Lori Loughlin care about their careers. I can’t dispute the fact that Macy and Huffman are talented actors who seem committed to their professions.
If so, they won’t be laughing if viewers who are appalled by the scandals follow through by refusing to watch their shows. But if they’re treated as larger than life celebs, still fawned over by more than their wealthy friends .....no, nothing will change.
10
@zigful26 I'm not so sure. This is pretty big and run by the FBI.
7
Or Malibu.
3
I'm waiting to hear from Donald Trump, or perhaps Sarah Sanders, on how awful it was that these liberal coastal elites were using bogus doctors notes to get an advantage for their kids.
44
@Jim S.
Hey doc, as long as you’re writing that note giving me extra time on the ACT, could you throw in a line about bone spurs?
Seriously, who pays half a million to get their kid into USC? I say this as an outraged Californian.
264
@JMF I got a free ride at USC the old fashioned way. I earned it with a high GPA from UCSD.
4
@JMF
I know right?
7
$500K is a small price to pay up front for these folks considering they stand to make many millions off social media with deals from Amazon and others. She needed to be at USC to increase her social media value. Sad state of affairs we’re in these days.
21
Paul Manafort gets a slap on the wrist for far worse crimes against our country and the American taxpayer and yet there are four op-eds in the Times today about this scandal and the public is braying for the heads of Felicity Huffman and Lori Louglin....we are lost...
17
@Brian33: One wrong does not make the other less wrong. Both are crimes and should be treated as such! And it’s not as though we haven’t heard about Manafort and his criminal activity often in the past year.
4
They could have thrown $500,000 in the bank for four years and then give each daughter $300,000 apiece as a graduation present. That plus a BA from wherever they could have gotten in legitimately seems like the better way to than USC - half a mil.
31
@Thomas what bank turns $500,000 into $600,000 after 4 years, allowing each girl, as you note to get $300,000 each ? Could you provide the banks name? I’m definitely missing out on those returns.
2
@Jace
It's not crazy. 5% annual net return would do it.
1
My kids went to schools they deserve, on honest effort. This news is all about unfortunate parents who never felt good about their children's effort and felt that they had to inject $$ to help them get there. In the end, it ruined them.
7
@David Exactly. My son, now 20, was raised with the truth that your effort is tied to your outcome. In the end, for most of these students, where you to go to college or even if you go to college, ceases to be important. But the lies embedded in your life will shape that life.
3
@David I feel sorry for the kids (if they didn't know), because now they have found out that their parents didn't really think that much of them.
2
I did not see it in any of the articles but how did this become public?
4
@Brendan O’Donnell I read the Feds, in working on an unrelated case, had someone involved in that illegal endeavor, say, oh, I can share some information with you as a sort of bargaining chip, share what s/he knew about this situation. That prompted an investigation.
1
@Brendan O’Donnell
US Attorney, Boston headed the case but there was a tip from someone faced with a different charge, who traded this info for leniency.
@Brendan O’Donnell
The FBI said, in the announcement yesterday, that this investigation came about because of a tip in another investigation.
2
Where are the Conservatives on FOX News demanding the Supreme Court strike down this Affirmative Action for Rich White Connected kids??
122
They are all laying low because they all probably did something similar to gain advantage for their kids. Perhaps not illegal, but if they have connections, they use them.
3
@G.Janeiro
A lot of rich, white, connected people aren't felons and are pissed off about this too.
I have lost count of the number of kids I know who have gotten extra or unlimited time to take the standardized tests. It is an open secret that parents search out and find doctors who earn significant income by writing reports for IEPs that give kids unlimited time on these exams (and schools and companies must accommodate).
One child recently bragged how she gets four days for the ACT, one day for each section even though she does not have an actual learning disability. It is awful and unfair. The same approach that we should take with vaccines should be for extra time on these exams - given only in extreme cases with significant medical corroboration.
370
Everyone with ears and eyes sees and knows this. No one does anything. It isn’t done with some good reason of course. How on earth can one honestly question others disabilities?
Maybe now things change.
6
@BMD There may be abuses of this system. However, abuse of the system by a few should not deprive those with actual disabilities from obtaining special conditions to take these exams. What this all points out to me is what a farce these exams are. The exams have little correlation to how well or whether a student can perform at a school. It's a money making scam by the testing companies and all the prep courses that rely on testing being a big component into gaining entrance to a college.
25
@Brian Clarke
It is true that the strongest predicter of success in college is a student's grade point average. That said, when faced with a stack of applications (multiples of the number of potential slots) where all the applicants are A+ students and with many "programs" to fill (i.e. sports, music, etc.) admissions begin to look at what was always presumed to be the most objective criteria (test scores) and then, more subjectively, at other items.
That said, in this case both criteria were compromised. Test scores were altered and, perhaps, dubious testing modifications allowed. Additionally, students were buoyed by a corrupt scholarship system (coaches) that sought them as potential athletes.
More than just the test scores, this was a break-down across the board. In the end, none of this advances us toward a comprehensive plan for fair admissions or toward a system that can accommodate certain students who truly have a particular disability that interferes with an otherwise bright mind.
8
I'm puzzled by something...
The kids of the parents who forked over the money to circumvent the system; who I assume had rubbish high school grades, but who got in to top schools like Stanford or Yale: how did these kids stay in?
Stanford and Yale, to the best of my knowledge, don't offer easy majors. Even smart kids who get in legit, on brainpower, have to study.
What am I missing? Do they flunk out after two years?
25
@Taz
Not as hard as you think to stay in.
Many of these schools give Pass/Fail or easy grading.
Grade inflation in recent years has been much discussed.
The days when I attended Columbia, the exams were very closely proctored (bathroom door bolted open and mirrors inside during exams) and a grading curve that REQUIRED a certain percentage to fail, a certain percentage for D, etc., and only 3% As are long gone.
15
@mike Not in the state schools my kids are attending! However, all are (or have been) in the hard sciences. That may make a difference.
1
@Taz
Top tier schools, with the possible exception of the University of Chicago, are infinitely easier to stay in than they are to get into.
10
“Deliberate misconduct is rare,” really, how would anyone know that. Getting caught might be rare, that’s the best one could say.
31
This is great. I hope this is the beginning of the end of the whole corrupt higher education bubble, with its bureaucratically bloated colleges and the insane obsession with applications, and the crippling loans that so many students take on for useless degrees.
39
$500,000 to get your child accepted on the rowing team? What's this world coming to? That amount of money could have...well, let's not even go there. Let's go to someplace called the US of A in 2019.
7
An exemplary way of teaching your kids how to get to the head of the line without queing.
10
@Giskander . . . or even knowing how to spell 'queuing' ;-)
Anyone want to guess when a rich entitled parent gets caught breaking the law for their rich and entitled child? They hire lawyers that rich people hire. They cry. They spend more on their defense than you will retire on and then they might, MIGHT, get community service. If one of these parents goes to jail, or one of these kids is expelled, I’ll eat my hat. This is America.
89
@Chris Ryan They lived a blameless life before this scandal.
4
@Chris Ryan I'll feel so vindicated and relieved that one of them is in jail for their felonies that I won't make you eat your hat, Chris. We'll eat some cake, instead - yes?
9
"Honey, you don't have to work hard. We'll help you lie, cheat and steal to get ahead." This is how we got the Trumps. People with zero integrity assuming they are entitled to whatever they want. I'm so glad these people are being called out.
And I initially felt bad for the kids until I read about Loughlin's daughter who posted about not caring about college and just being there to party. They stole that slot from someone who'd actually like to be there for an education.
533
@Anne My son.
14
@Anne
Horse apples. Those kids, in front of a Tiger Mom Boss, would last about 45 seconds. I've actually seen it.
Pity those kids. They're doomed.
@Anne To be fair, it sounds like not all kids were aware. The ones who faked sports achievements obviously (which includes Loughlin's), but not necessarily the ones who just had their scores altered (like maybe Huffman/Macy's?)
But even those kids will pay. Maybe not all of them -- some who are less famous celebrities may not achieve "household name" status -- but I do feel sorry for Huffman's daughter. Her mom and dad really screwed her, and it won't matter that she didn't know.
8
It will be interesting to see what kind of light sentences are handed out to those found guilty, since those charged are mostly well off and white.
5
I am shocked—SHOCKED—that wealthy parents who give lip service to equality and level playing fields are secretly stacking the deck in Tyler and Tiffany’s favor.
American Dream? More like Myth of Meritocracy...
30
What would be most interesting is how all these accused got acquainted with Singer and his racket. Was there a network of recruitment? Or just high net worth parents mentioning this to their friends?
21
This is the most egregious--and illegal-- example of a system that operates in a hierarchy of unfairness. The next level down, which is not illegal, but still repugnant, is the donation approach, which certainly gets under-qualified kids into elite universities. Here's a small step towards a solution. If you're an employer, don't blindly hire out of top institutions. These universities have unearned their intellectual capital by encouraging gaming of the system. If employers start to prefer the top students from lower tier schools over the mediocre students from elite schools, then I think our current system will begin to regulate itself.
16
Mr. Singer said the playing field is not fair? The playing field that says every student gets the same amount of time for taking a test?
Poor little rich kids. I feel for them and their “disabilities.”
2
@Joanne I feel for the kids that legitimately need the extra time.
You know the system is rigged.....why are we surprised. There are legacy, student prescribed Ritalin and now this.
3
Singer should not be able to get off by turning state's evidence.
Maybe a lesser sentence, but if his clients are each guilty of 2 felonies, he's guilty of 50!
4
@Will Hogan
That's just silly!
Think of Manafort, who harmed our entire nation...world.
Good time for the Times to dig in on the acceptance of very wealthy foreign students to the Ivy’s and other high end college. All may be great students but maybe there was pay involved there as well.
46
@Dante Agreed! Something is completely rotten. If this kind of cheating and graft is happening here, can you imagine what's going on overseas?
Anecdotally, an ivy grad school began requiring a video submission in applications because numerous foreign students were accepted and enrolled and found to barely speak English. Their polished applications didn't match their capabilities. They couldn't participate in classes and were really only enrolled to party.
5
Ah, the disinfectant of the Light seeping through the clouds of what has been going on with college admissions for eons.
I don’t want to hear anyone ever claim that black/brown/beige kids receiving preferential college admission over white kids based on their race. Never, ever, ever! Sunshine!
14
@Ronald Dennis
Ask Clarence Thomas.
What is most infuriating about this whole affair is not the blatant illegality of these privileged parents' actions but the numerous ways in which the college admissions system is legally, but unfairly structured in their favor. Rich kids get legacy admissions and hefty donations, not to mention all the time and money their parents can pour into tutors and resume builders. Meanwhile, these woefully underqualified kids are probably the same people who believe that affirmative action gives Black kids an unfair advantage in admissions, lol. A thorough restructuring of higher education in the United States is in order.
9
Our school district is very unique and diverse... economically, socially, and racially. We have TONS of issues, but it has define 'realities' for many students. Even the most deserving... smartest (perfect standardized test scores and AP grades), talented (XC, track, musician (three instruments), nicest (student clubs involved with feeding the poor etc), down to earth student seem to have such a difficult making it to their top schools! Then you hear of this... UGH! The system is sooo broken and my family will not buy into it (rising High schoolers)...
3
What will the children -- whose parents are so morally deficient and corrupt -- be like as grownups? Hopefully they will reject the poor examples set by their parents and do far better than the Trump and Kushner progeny have.
3
How we all love to watch the scheming rich fall. Oh, the schadenfreude!
11
The only difference between a $1.5 million dollar 'bribe' and a $1.5 million dollar 'donation' is who you write the check to. This system is broken.
82
@markymark
Correct. And the US Attorney said so.
No law yet passed our Congress to make donations illegal.
1
I’m shocked, shocked, to discover that head coaches (paragons of virtue and paladins of integrity) accepted bribes! How is it possible?
18
My proposed punishment for overzealous American new rich or quasi celebrity parents: let them start over from square one in kindergarten and learn everything they need to know or immobilize their heads and force the alleged parents to watch reruns of eighties sitcom The Facts Of Life.
The punishment will fit the crime and prove a deterrent to others that might stray down their wicked path
I would not penalize the kids. They must be mortified and will be for life.
They were more than under their parents’ influence — they were under their control. Plus — they had parents who never taught them morals. This to me is another kind of being disadvantaged — maybe the most important kind.
These are the values of the Trump and Kushner families perfectly expressed: Lie, cheat, and then boast about your achievements.
In my corporate job dozens of times the “pedigree” of a top tier school was a deciding factor between potential new hires. How often did we pass over a better but less advantaged candidate to hire one of these undeserving cheaters? Makes me sick to think about it.
44
I can't think of anything sicker than having your child falsely diagnosed with a disability to gain an advantage. It is beyond the pale. That the already wealthy and powerful felt they needed more and gamed the system is disgusting.
The education professionals who participated in this massive fraud are a complete embarrassment to the profession. These people put their greed and aggrandizement first and have no place working with children.
The message being sent to hard working students and families is devastating. SAT and ACT have a major credibility problem on their hands. The corporate sponsors and enablers of those who would perpetrate this fraud should drop them and do some outreach that matters. Propping up greed-driven influencers is about the greatest waste of resources imaginable.
14
In the new world of trumpism lying, cheating, and making payoffs is the accepted way now.
Nice for the kids
1
Arrest every enabler in this crime ring - the proctors, the psychologists and all others who received a portion of the bribe.
5
What is a level playing field?
We are appalled by the behavior of those we might consider role models. Yet, we fail to realize that this Indictment is but the tip of the iceberg. It demonstrates an uneven playing field that lies beneath.
We are callus to the inequities of our society & the higher education game:
• historic familial legacies (Carnegie, Kennedy, Bush, Trump…);
• large monetary donations or endowments;
• “old boys” network;
• historic & present selective biases (inclusive or exclusive) of colleges based on gender/race;
• Money (paying learning coaches to address learning differences, affording SAT tutors/programs, writing coaches, accessing boarding schools; affording enrichment camps/programs (beyond one’s city rec programs);
• social capital (a personal network of educated professionals);
• medical care, vision care, dental care;
• healthy & untainted food and water (food insecurity);
• housing insecurity;
• physical safety (internal/external); and
• access to “high quality teacher” (unfortunates not all public or private schools are equal). I'll stop.
Can we use our collective political resources to aid all children? Perhaps those highly selective institution (primary to post-secondary) can find ways to increase their enrollments or WE could divert more of our public/private resources to education & health. Do people really need 3 homes?
I once heard that capitalism is capable of helping all; it is just the capitalist that won’t.
6
I hope they also investigate the medical professionals who issued the false medical documents giving these students special treatment for “fake” disabilities. What an insult to the students who really need the extra help for “real” disabilities. Outrageous!
39
There isn’t a single thing about this scandal that doesn’t disgust me, but I think the thing that disgust me the most is the abuse of accommodations. As the parent of a 2E child (a gifted kid with an LD) the use of a talented neuropsychologist and the development of an IEP has been a godsend. It took years to get our child diagnosed, and it was an uphill struggle. The time, energy and tears that were expended in this process was unquantifiable, now, I’m just waiting for the blowback over this. For years we were told our child was just “lazy,” and now the crowds will be telling us “she’s gaming the system.”
9
One of the young adults Olivia jade implicated was a “social media influencer” sponsored by Amazon prime, and working on a line of cosmetics with Sephora. These big corporations should choose their influencers wisely, there are many who have both beauty and brains and achievement. What an ill society.
92
@Orion, another idea is to encourage people to stop following shallow so- called influencers. Olivia Jade and her fellow influencers are nothing more than shills.
Once again, turn off the phones.
20
@sanderling1
"another idea is to encourage people to stop following shallow so- called influencers"
Is there another kind of "influencer"?
1
The silver lining in this whole tawdry affair is that the Justice Department and the FBI are still at work addressing corruption by the rich and famous, despite the relentless assaults on them by the Corrupter-in-Chief who currently occupies the White House. And as others have said before me, picking this particular rock up raises legitimate questions of how Jared Kushner got into Harvard and how the man who can not complete a coherent sentence ended up at Wharton. Good work, law enforcement. This American appreciates your efforts and integrity.
210
I was shocked when I looked on Willkie Farr's website last night and saw that partner Gordon Caplan's bio was still there. Relieved to see they have finally taken it down today. However, I do wonder if these cases will be treated as seriously as something like insider trading or whether defendants will get off easy by being allowed to plead to misdemeanors because just paying a few bucks to get your kid into a college they are otherwise unqualified for isn't considered such a big deal.
11
What I find absurd is the notion that the children -certainly most of whom are legal adults given they were seniors - were not complicit if not actively involved in this scam. I certainly knew my GPA, SATs and all the schools that I had a chance, no chance etc of getting into. Had I gotten in anywhere that was out of my reach that would have been strange to me and I would have been curious - but since my family didn't have money it wouldn't have occurred to me I bought my way in. Nevertheless - these kids should be expelled immediately - if not accessories to the crime. Everything about this disgusts me - not because I don't know that parents buy their kids spots - but they are now caught - let's make an example of all of them
136
@Dana, students who received scholarships for sports that they never played had to know that this was not legitimate. The schools could rescind the scholarships and inform these students and their families that they must reimburse the schools.
I am most sorry for students who were not admitted because these families lied and cheated.
24
@sanderling1 - It doesn't appear that the students received scholarships, they were presented "recruits" that would be seeking to walk-on to the teams.
7
@Dana Totally agree,they all should be expelled.
2
Now Yale and Stanford, having been "victimized" by their own sale of admissions spots to the super-rich, can cash in again by threatening to cancel those students' degrees, and negotiating settlements!
1
One of the reasons that Apple chose NYC and Metro DC for their campuses was that the execs wanted their kids to go to el-hi school with the children of the powerful. The life checklists of the rich are different than yours and mine.
6
@Marjorie
Apple has not selected NY or DC for any campus.
Boy, rich parents who used legal bribes must be fuming. They had to game the system with multi-million dollar "donations" while these other folks paid as little as $15,000 to get their test-challenged kids into top schools.
23
Papa Kushner did it the right way. He openly gave Harvard $1,500,000. Shortly thereafter, Jared was admitted.
34
@Aspirant. And don’t we wonder how little Mahlia got in?
1
@Jackson-Probably because she is very very intelligent and her father was a President of the United States.
2
@Aspirant: The amount I’ve seen quoted in the NY Times is $2,500,000. But what’s a million or so among friends?
4
A lot of comments in the various NYT articles pitying the kids. How is it possible that these kids did not know? I went through the college process. I filled out my application and put in my information. I signed the papers. Are these rich kids also not filling out their own applications? If you haven't played a minute of Water Polo it's hard to imagine seeing it on the application and not giving it a second thought. It's infuriating that these kids who already have it all need to cheat (large "donations" included) to get into school. It's such a reflection of this country's ethos. Well, at least the Laughlin kid can fall back on her "influencing" career. Not only did she cheat to get into school, but then also doesn't show up for class and throws that in the public's face. I guess grades and the degree are being guaranteed by a different "service". If you're so rich why bother going to college? Stay home and continue taking selfies, which is what you're going to be doing after school anyway. She and her like should be expelled to make way for kids who earned and want education.
317
@John It appears that some of them may not have written their essays either, so they didn't know that they were water polo stars.
But either way, these students were totally complicit.
34
Read the indictments. In most of the cases, the kids did not know because the falsified athlete profiles and applications were submitted to only the school taking the bribes. Their applications for all other schools were different. It was apparent that this college coach, Rick Singer, submitted the false applications himself and the kids never knew.
2
@John Agree with you. If someone is taking the SAT for you or you know you don’t have ADHD but daddy’s special friend says you do to get extra time... you know you’re cheating the system. These kids might not be Einstein’s but I doubt they’re clueless.
22
As a school psychologist working with private and public school students, I'm very familiar with the pushy parents who figure out when their kids are high school juniors that a special ed eligibility of, say, ADHD could translate into extra time on entrance exams. I've always been very by-the-book in relating to them. Students don't suddenly develop learning disabilities a few months before they sit these high-stakes tests, and qualifying a student on dubious grounds is no different than smuggling a pangolin as one's emotional support animal. It's dishonest and makes it harder for those with real issues to get the accommodations they need.
I had to laugh at Mr. Singer's loose grasp of how eligibility or "discrepancy" works. Telling the students to "play dumb, the dumber the better" is exactly wrong. I won't get into specifics here in case his compadres in shady college admissions are reading.
142
Honestly? All kids should be given sufficient time to finish the darn test. We all process at different speeds and it takes some of us longer than other. If so many kids are requiring extra time, perhaps there’s one issue right there!
6
@Gwe I agree it would be wise to give all students the best chance of demonstrating their knowledge on these tests. Evidently ETS has established, no doubt through R & D, the amount of time the test takes. Part of what's tested is time management.
People who legitimately take much longer are likely already eligible for special education as students with learning disabilities in the form of significantly slower processing time. Such students should be identified and provided with accommodations much sooner than 11th grade, as they would otherwise struggle to complete in-class timed tasks (e.g., exams that most other students can complete in one class period). Again, the issue is not meeting the needs of students with different styles of learning and demonstrating their knowledge, it's the people trying to gain unfair advantage.
Of course the overarching issue is the weak correlation between these exams and success in college.
8
@raph101
Why can't the College Board give all kids double the time. In real life, the idea that you have to do things quickly to do them well is false.
4
I wonder what else will be uncovered as they dig deeper into Mr. Singer's business.
I just went through the admissions process with my kids. Quite the learning curve as I went in clueless about the strategies other parents, (mostly wealthy,) used to give their kids a leg up - from large donations, glorifying athletics over the arts and sometimes even academics, as well as using board and big donor connections. Then, there was the celebrity factor. So many children of famous people at selective schools - sometimes even more than one child at the same school. How did that happen?
My children ended up happy at great colleges. Thankfully, the whipped-up racket of the admissions process is behind us.
12
This medical time extension presents one of the biggest problems with the ACT and SAT. Students with a doctors note can get lots of extra time on tests where time-pressure basically makes the test hard. Remove time pressure and voila, it becomes much earlier.
There’s a story that many private schools coach students to apply for medical-based time extensions to gain advantage. Pedestrians in wealthy communities get many requests.
The test services don’t note who gets extra time and who does not. So the problems with standardized testing stem from these time extensions, not just with cheating and bribed proctors.
4
Very sad although the crime here is not against the supposedly fair and meritocratic college admission system. The crime is that they tried to do it on the cheap rather than donating a million or so directly to the Universities.
6
I'm grateful my daughter learned early on there are many ways to be successful in life, and the ultimate goals were happiness and contentment. I didn't want her to believe for a moment that my love and pride hinged on academic prowess or prizes bestowed by a capricious world. That said, her genuine curiosity lead her to acceptance at Yale, whose financial aid program allowed her to attend - my middle class salary couldn't begin to pay for four years. Parents who are frenetically pushing their kids into supposedly elite schools are doing terrible damage to their children. This win at any cost mentality harms the soul. One of the most accomplished women I know - a powerhouse District Supervisor - attended Chico State. Her brilliance and drive came from within. Really, it's all so distressing; my god how shallow this culture can be.
34
What happens to minority enrollment if we eliminate the advantage of athletic ability? The discussion so far is all about the privileged getting into elite colleges. And what about gender? How many of these student-athletes identify as men? Men are increasingly being under-represented in higher education - do we need new programs to ensure their participation if we eliminate athletics?
2
When I was a student many years ago, I applied only to "safe schools," because I had been told -- or maybe I just intuited -- that the schools accepting only a small percentage of students were just too good for me. Even though I was a straight A student with a real thirst for learning and a gift for writing, I didn't have the marketable extracurriculars or the stratospheric SAT scores, although I did very well on the verbal portion of the test. My parents never went to college and certainly weren't the type to endow university buildings.
I wound up transferring to a school that was a perfect fit -- Sarah Lawrence College -- and became a writer.
Reading this story about all the places that didn't want me, I now realize I wouldn't have wanted them. -- thegamesmenplay.com
17
This explains a lot:
I was the first of my family to attend college in this country, and Elite college in the Northeast. All my classmates were from preppy New England towns and knew each other from various Lacrosse tournaments. Funny thing, they all commented on how smart I was, and I ended up tutoring a majority of my economics class. Somehow these classmates, all of whom went to Aruba with their families for Christmas, didn't quite have the brainpower to understand how linear regressions worked, or figure out multi-variate calculus.
Now I know, they weren't as smart as me. They just got in because they were legacies, or the Lacrosse coach wrote them a recommendation.
241
@MoneyRules You nailed it!
12
@MoneyRules
Since they weren't as smart as you, you were the valedictorian?
First in my family to attend any college and did so on the GI bill while working. Don't know "how linear regressions worked" and I struggled with calculus.
Surprised that someone as smart as you would lump "all my classmates" into the same category.
Pretty sure you had classmates like me that didn't even know to take a test "prep" course before entrance exams, had no "connections", never played Lacrosse and spent Christmas break working to paying living expenses.
10
@MoneyRules
As “smart” as I. How did you get in?
5
What I really want to know is what, if anything, will happen to the other 700+ families that he has claimed to have helped via the same methods? Will they get charged and or the students expelled? Or do they get off totally free? Seems like the FBI needs to continue their investigation.
143
@knowledgenerd - And possibly the IRS, as it sounds like parents were "donating" their bribes to the charity Mr. Singer connected to his scheme - and then "claiming" those bribes as charitable deductions... Insane
22
I'm pleased to see that this criminal activity is being discovered and addressed appropriately. Make no mistake that there is a qualitative difference between these acts and those of a legacy alumnus whose endowment makes the difference in having their qualified children attend the same university they did. I agree with the sentiments of the person who commented that an undergraduate degree with honors from Michigan or BU, for example, is of equal value to one from a so-called prestige school. We are lesser people for knowing only the price of something and not its value.
I am confused about how it is possible students were not aware of the plot, at least in situations where someone who had never particated in water polo or whatever sport was used as part of the ploy was instructed to "show up" for practice at least for the first semester. Also, by the time a high schooler takes that final SAT, that student is very well aware of how they score. If my now 20-year old had all of a suddent jumped 100 points from his PSAT to his first SAT to his second SAT (especially since he would recognize while taking any improvement), he would question the result. Same for students who didn't take the SAT (someone took it for them) or those without a disability who took it with disability status. Testing protocol is drilled into students starting in middle school. Any student on a path to college certainly understands the difference in test taking process and environment if there is a disability. So, I am not buying this idea studentd were completely clueless about their parents' actions. Unless, of course, a particular student is such an under performer that they truly were duped. Which begs another question: If someone is that below par in both emotional intelligence and book smart that they fell for it, how did student believe their SAT score?
25
@Annie Blanchette
Just my opinion as I have no proof, the kids absolutely knew. It's just not credible that they didn't. Sadly, they and their peers probably believe that this is just how things work for people like them. Their parents have demonstrated that.
Getting through the rest of their lives may prove more challenging.
9
Some of the kids were in on it, and some were duped. One of the particularly egregious examples in the complaint was how one kid suspected that something was up when her parents tried to arrange for her to take the ACT under the same "special circumstances" her older sister did. The parent acknowledged that this kid was smarter than her older sister, so she wouldn't be as easy to fool. Also, she genuinely believed she could score well on the ACT, and she said if she didn't get a good score, she would just keep retaking the test until she got one. The dad was really annoyed with her persistence because he just "wanted to be done with it."
5
"extended time" should be restricted to those with physical disabilities that limit their interaction with the computer used in the test. That's it. Anything beyond that is fraud, by the parents and the doctors who sign the notes.
3
@Tom
Clearly you do not have a child with learning disabilities. My child does not need the extra time, but she certainly needs the room that’s allotted to her free from distractions.
1
Learn more before you post. Children with documented learning disabilities need and use extra time effectively. Often times these kids have been through the ringer to get the education that is guaranteed to them by law, and have reams of documentation to support them. Abusing the system, as these entitled parents and their co-conspirators, did is the sin here. Not extra time that deserving students need.
50 people?
Sounds like the tip of a very massive iceberg. Probably an awful lot of nervous parents out there wondering if the shoe (of justice) is about to drop on them.
The "risk-reward" decision for breaking the law probably had them thinking that they had little to worry about. Imagine the quiet conversations at their dinner parties in the Hamptons, trading secrets on how to secure that "trophy college". Tutors, coaches, connections, donations, and deceit.
Why? Desperate parents do desperate things.
A diploma from one of the elite, ultra-selective universities provides unimaginable connections and virtually guarantees that the next generation will maintain their hold on wealth, prestige, and power.
My daughter was a summer tour guide at an Ivy (not implicated here). The hands down, number one question that parents asked her was, "What odes it take to get accepted? . . . what's the secret?"
6
If anyone wonders why the rich can rob the poor with no regard whatsoever, you only need to read a passage from the 1910 novel "Howards End" which shows one character's utter contempt of the poor that is as relevant today as it was a century ago: "A word of advice. Don't take up that sentimental attitude over the poor. The poor are poor, and one's sorry for them, but there it is. As civilization moves forward, the shoe is bound to pinch in places, and it's absurd to pretend that anyone is responsible personally. It's just the shoe pinching--no one can help it; and it might easily have been worse. By all means subscribe to charities--subscribe to them largely--but don't get carried away by absurd schemes of Social Reform. I see a good deal behind the scenes, and you can take it from me that there is no Social Question--except for a few journalists who try to get a living out of the phrase. There are just rich and poor, as there always have been and always will be. Point me out a time when men have been equal. Point me out a time when desire for equality has made them happier. No, no. You can't. There always have been rich and poor. I'm no fatalist. Heaven forbid! But our civilization is moulded by great impersonal forces, and there always will be rich and poor. You can't deny it. And you can't deny that, in spite of all, the tendency of civilization has on the whole been upward."?
3
I hope the doctors’ cooperation in providing the medical documentation is examined by their respective medical boards for possible licensing violations.
95
@Texas
The specific person mentioned in this article is a psychologist, not a physician. Education accommodations such as extra time often require psychological testing.
1
@JM
Consider the bone spurs on the commander-in-chief's feet
1
@Texas Psychologists on the take from bossy parents who pay well is endemic throughout education. I remember being shocked to learn how many parents will go to one of them to have their preschool child falsely diagnosed with autism in order to receive extra services such as speech and occupational therapies. The parents believed these services give their kids a leg up; many will report that by kindergarten, the kids are all better and have gained acceptance to competitive private schools.
My main beef with the practice is that young children shouldn't be spending their days one-on-one with adults who needlessly drill them on skills they'd pick up just like other kids. The child of course senses all these adults treat them as defective, and misses out on crucial play- and downtime. It's a true travesty.
2
'Twas always thus at some institutions. At my "foster mother" if you donated funds to build a building, it was named after you and your kids, Willy and Nilly, got in no questions asked. Legacy admissions are similarly a cheating shortcut to competitive admissions. The results sometimes speak for themselves, witness GWB. And what about the "special admissions" loopholes for athletes and the whole panoply of, wink, wink, tutors, gut courses, and general exploitation of college athletes? Don't ask. The effect of all the grift, graft, and shortcuts is to undercut the morale of legitimate participants--students, faculty, administration and staff--and blacken the reputation of an institution. We're seeing that played out right now.
4
Besides the obvious -- the rich pay for their degree while the middle and lower classes actually have to work for them -- is how this denigrates the college degree for so many. Next time someone writes that they attended USC or Princeton, their potential future employer may be wondering whether the degree was earned or purchased.
17
This is nothing less than a "Pay to Play" operation - one in which ALL parties are complicit participants --
One can only imagine the Deans, Provosts, Board Members and PhD faculty members who are all shaking in their boots right now - as they hope against hope that their "Academic" coating of Teflon will somehow protect them from the fallout - and punishment - which will ensue --
"Higher Learning" - indeed...
My child suffered an assault that caused a brain injury 5 years ago. She is waiting for college applications now after working with her doctors and her middle and high schools under a 504 plan, the one that these parents used to get their children’s SAT/ACT tests altered or taken by another person.
After the first test, my child’s brain was exhausted from the testing due the brain injury. She was so ashamed about being separated from the other students and from being the last to finish. She got into the car and sobbed. I reminded her that the other kids hadn’t survived an attempt on their lives. I told her that she would get into the school that was perfect for her.
She has gotten into two good schools without cheating and by using her own skills. She wrote every college application. She started early and did not seek my help. She will be fine.
There is NO WAY that the kids involved didn’t know that their parents gamed the system for them, and I know because of the experience my family has just completed so that our child can go to college, since our senior just completed testing and applications with a 504 plan. The parents and their children should be ashamed. They dishonor the hard work of my child and of so many others who legitimately need these plans. She was crushed not to get into UCLA and USC. How sad that the wealthy don’t care about dishonor as long as their kid gets what they believe they are entitled to.
201
Thanks for your comment. I hope students with genuine learning disabilities won’t be tarred with the same brush as these frauds.
15
@Christina
You have the joy and the immense pride of having raising a strong and resilient daughter who faces life head on.
Something these indicted parents will never experience with their entitled and indulged offspring.
4
The playing field has never been fair. That the rich don't play by the same rules as the rest of us is not news.
4
It bothers me that the guy who created the scam, recruited the employees from elite institutions and recruited the parents, gets a deal and then proceeds to ramp his scam to new heights while recording every conversation and email for the DOJ. These people willingly participated but it is Singer who is at the top. So why does he get the deal?
4
Note to the 1%: if you are dispensing cash to get your child into college, it must go directly to the college, or it is illegal.
1
Last week I was a proctor for the SAT test at my son's school. I watched the kids sweat during the 4 hour test. I heard them at the break, anxiously talking amongst themselves. And then I see a video of Lori Loughlin's perfectly made-up daughter in her dorm room at USC saying she doesn't really care about college. It made my blood boil. She should withdraw from the school immediately.
308
@Dee
Withdraw? How about get kicked out?
49
@Dee. She ought to be expelled immediately.
39
These students should be kicked out and not allowed to withdraw. I can’t imagine that the Instagram peddler has the grades to stay in—unless she’s paying someone to take her tests and write her papers. Actually, that’s the most likely scenario.
34
Among the many horribles of this scandal is the flagrant overuse of "disabilities" to get extra time for the test. Frankly, this is a tactic that is very widely used by anxious parents, including those without the resources to engage in outright bribery. I dare say there is not a college prep oriented suburban high school or private school where some parent(s) have not used this tactic.
It's become the education equivalent to the "service animal" getting on airplanes.
32
Learning disabilities don't suddenly appear at age 17. How about requiring a documented history of accommodation during the child's earlier school career.
11
They do. Sad to see the system exploited. The number of burning hoops that must be jumped through to get extended time are many. Guess we missed out on whatever the easy was these frauds took.
1
@JackCerf, Perhaps not, but emotional and anxiety issues do ie: OCD etc
1
I feel so badly for the kids, who may now face being ostracized by their classmates. Or even kicked out of school, is that a possibility? Not to mention knowing that their parents had such little faith in their abilities that they literally bought their way into certain colleges. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that some of the kids didn’t know about it. Particularly when their applications claimed that they were sports stars, which they clearly were not. A mess all around.
7
I find it impossible to believe the “kids” didn’t know. My guess is the “kids” are a whole lot like mom and dad.
6
Hello All:
Some good may come of this, but only if we, the people, use the one power we all have - our solidarity.
The College Board has enjoyed a monopoly at the expense (literal and figurative) of every college-bound student for decades. Some universities are actually trying to do something about it, by making submission of SAT/ACT scores optional.
If your child is applying to a school with optional test scores, encourage them to NOT submit their scores. If every college-bound student does this, the College Board will collapse like a house of cards.
Cheers,
Jeff Pucillo
4
Administrators and regents are scrambling for answers, as the article says.
Will anyone believe those answers?
1
As the parent of a child with dyslexia, I am particularly disgusted by these people taking advantage of the testing situations that children with real learning disabilities depend upon.
My daughter is an intelligent person who has managed her dyslexia through skills she has developed through various reading systems. Yet it still takes her much longer to read basic texts and also to take standardized tests. For her it’s an ongoing struggle of lessened confidence and heightened frustration to get through something that often takes her peers less than half the time to accomplish. She would much rather take tests with everyone else, “like normal kids,” than in a specialized, isolated situation but she needs the extra time and focus just to read competently. How shockingly cruel for these people with so many other advantages of wealth and access to take (further) advantage of a testing situation that has been created to support children with real academic struggles, obstacles, and daily challenges.
234
@JHM I kinda wonder why everyone can't have as much time as they need to take the tests, I don't think I'd qualify for disability but maybe, I'm 65 and so it doesn't really matter, but I bet if I felt more relaxed I could have thought more clearly.
3
@JHM This is what is bothering me the most as well. As a parent of kids with learning differences and dyslexia, I know they field lots of judgment ("audiobooks are not really reading", "you don't look like anything is wrong with you", "just use spell check and you will be fine", etc). To fake an LD in order to game the system is deplorable and totally discredits kids who need extra time to take standardized tests. I am sure my kids will be getting the side eye as they start the testing process next year.
12
@JHM
Agreed that this does a great disservice to those kids with real learning disabilities who face the hurdle of having to take the tests.
My 19 year old daughter is quite dyslexic, and has worked hard over the years at getting her reading up to an average speed. She is whip smart when it comes to many things and has deep insights into people and situations, but try as she might, when it comes to math, she couldn't test her way out of a paper bag. She is resigned to attending a local community college for the first two years of higher education before she goes off to a local state school. I have total belief in her ability to find her way and thrive in life. As parents, we occasionally prod or prompt, but any success she achieves is going to be done by her, on her own terms.
4
Once again, we see evidence that the "fix is in" with regards to wealthy or celebrity individuals. From preferential treatment on college admissions, we'll now get to observe the effects of wealth on criminal justice. The "over/under" is probation and fines; jail time pays the over. Guess which one is the "house bet."
6
As a parent and an educator, I have definitely seen cases where parents sought an IEP or diagnosis for their children to give them an advantage in test-taking. This includes a prescription for Adderall, the "test-taking" medication. Another practice is redshirting, which allows parents to delay the start of kindergarten for their kids. In their minds, this gives their children an advantage in both learning and sports. Cheating on standardized tests may not be as common, but it is all part of the same push to gain an advantage -- often at the expense of the child's mental health.
3
Aside from the illegality of it all (which is shameful and unacceptable), all parents are guilty of wanting the best for their children.
That is why private prep schools exist. A.P. classes and exams are offered at all high schools.There are countless test prep programs and tutors available. Science camps, math camps, stem programs exist for this reason. Private coaches, personal training, and conditioning are all available to athletes from a very young age.
Parents (wealthy or not) are going to strive to give their children the best. So, although what they did was wrong, as a parent, I can understand the motives behind it.
1
@Melissa M. Really Melissa? Wanting the best for your child should start with the values you role model. It does not mean giving them an education they may not be good enough to fully benefit from to the detriment of someone more deserving. It means giving them what works best for them through their own achievements. Your sentiment illustrates just how warped modern values have become.
3
@Melissa M.,
No, I absolutely do NOT understand this behavior. While I too want the best for my child, I also know I would be doing her no favors in life if I spoon fed everything and protected from failure. And helicoptering just means not having confidence in yourself as a parent or in the intellectual development and character of your child.
11
You understand behaving bluntly and excessively criminally and most importantly unethical so your children can be admitted to a college of prestige regardless of your love for your children when really it’s all about the parent’s ego. Anything goes? So, the parent achieves wealth or a comfortable income and now the chase is for a prestigious college and not the other more the adequate college institutions. Theft and greed and emptiness.
8
Let’s hope this college admissions for the wealthy scandal leads to examining the entire college admissions process—for the rich and the poor. The majority of the victims in college admissions are the middle class students who are deemed “too rich” to receive need-based scholarships, and too poor to pay $200/hour for college test prep and application services. What happened to the public school meritocracy which built U.S. colleges into the envy of the world? Every student under age 21 should compete on a level playing field independent of how poor, or rich, their parents happen to be.
120
@Paul Zane Pilzer as I wrote before in a response to a similar statement by Brett Stephens, U.S. Colleges are not the envy of the world. Sure Harvard, Yale, Stanford get a lot of respect and admiration but so do Cambridge and Oxford. Europe is full of high level prestigious universities that are not costing people an arm and a leg, neither in tuition fees, nor in “hidden” application fees. Canadian universities like UofT and McGill aren’t too shabby either. What the rest of the world has suspected for some time and now can see plain as day, is that in America, with money you can buy anything, even a college degree.
3
As a retired high school counselor, I am alarmed that the students' high school personnel were not aware that something was "rotten" here. In most schools students take in-school tests during their freshman and sophomore years that predict a pretty accurate range of ACT and SAT scores for their junior or senior years. Although there are ways for students to withhold their actual ACT/SAT scores from their high schools (e.g. having them sent directly to colleges), it should have raised red flags when a student with a predictive score of 22 gained entrance into an elite school (even if that student had been a genuine athlete).
126
@marilou At my school, the pSAT was optional. Also, we did not have to report what school we were accepted to, even though many chose to do so.
5
@marilou I was thinking that, also. And it should have raised alarms when Loughlin's daughter both got into USC because of Crew, which they had never done. You'd think the counselor would have questioned that.
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@marilou
I taught for 47 years at a small suburban New Jersey high school where our students worked very hard, wrote honest essays, and achieved excellent SAT scores honestly. No legacy here. Many were accepted into Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT just to name a few schools. Those rich,elite helicopter parents who felt they needed to pay and to cheat are simply saying their children do not deserve to be in those schools . Let's bring some morality back into the system, but I do not hold out any hope that there will be even any punishments or any consequences. What a travesty .
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What's saddest about this whole thing is twofold: firstly, that money makes such a difference to whether a student has access to test prep, and secondly, that it seems to matter so very, very much which college one goes to! As long as a college or university is accredited and decent, one gets the education one reaches for at any school. We are status-conscious at the expense of substance, and subsequently, of conscience.
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Money is not that important for test prep. What is important is self-discipline.
I got the 99th percentile on the law school version of standardized tests. The key was to get a practice book and do every single question in it. Every time you get it wrong, go back and re-read it. Learn the tricks. Learn to identify them, to see the switcheroos and gotchas.
The actual exam was easier than the practice exams. This regimen opened doors that would have been closed to me following a lackluster year and a half in the beginning of college.
Same rule applied for two bar exams. Passed them both on the first try.
Now - 1L final exams prep. ... THAT I should have done. I didn’t know at the time how ridiculous is the Socratic method and how it doesn’t prepare you to answer questions on the exams. 1L review from an outside service (which was very reasonably priced back then) would have changed my career path, most likely. I should have known better, but I was the first in my world to go to law school. Now I do know better, but a bit too late.
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@anon this case doesn't have anything to do with test prep or access to it. Regarding your second issue - not all schools offer an equivalent academic experience, even all schools in the accredited and "decent" pool.
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@anon But it doesn't matter what school rich kids with powerful parents go to - that's one of the most infuriating aspects of this whole thing.
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I hope that the FBI will broaden their review to include possible price fixing occurring between private colleges. I was baffled during my family’s college process how close the prices were, no matter how old the school, size of its endowment, campus facilities.
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